


How to Fall

by Poetry



Category: Leverage
Genre: Additional Warnings Apply, Awkward Sexual Situations, Banter, Declarations Of Love, Developing Relationship, Dirty Talk, Explicit Consent, Face-Sitting, Femdom, Fluff and Smut, Hair-pulling, Humor, Improvised Sex Toys, Kink Negotiation, Knifeplay, LGBTQ Character of Color, LGBTQ Female Character, Multi, PWP, Polyamory, Porn with Feelings, Rope Bondage, Sex Shop, Squirting, Temperature Play, Vibrators
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-28
Updated: 2015-12-15
Packaged: 2018-03-19 23:30:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 29,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3628314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poetry/pseuds/Poetry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Parker’s relationship with Hardison and Eliot, she decides, is like jumping off buildings. It’s exciting, possibly dangerous, and she might just need it to really feel alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Lockpick

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Demenior, TARDIS_stowaway, and krisisis for beta reading. This is my first fic in this wonderful fandom and I couldn't have done it without help.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Parker and Hardison experiment with a vibrator, and realize that Eliot is a part of their relationship in more ways than one.

Shift shift shift, floorboards creaking, weight from foot to foot. Parker is learning, see. She doesn’t even have to turn around to know that Hardison is embarrassed. “What did you do?” she says, still not turning around, because she wants to see how much more she can learn from him without looking.

“Nothing,” Hardison says. Shift shift shift. Parker waits. It isn’t nothing. “Well, okay, I got you something.”

A present! Parker turns around, chin on her hands on the back of the seat. “Did you steal me something?”

She was right. Hardison was ducking his head and making his smile small like he was trying to hide it. Definitely embarrassed. “Nah. Bought it. Hey, don’t look so disappointed. You know I don’t go stealing things without you!”

“I like it when you tell me stories about how you stole things. It’s not as good as being there, but I like it.”

Hardison takes a wrapped package from his backpack. He leans toward her, slowly, like he’s ready to jump back if she tells him no. She likes how important her no is to him, but she wishes he’d really believe what she said about kissing being okay now. So she leans forward fast, meets him halfway, presses their lips together. She reaches over the back of the seat and takes the package while they’re still kissing. She feels the shape of Hardison’s lips change as he smiles against her mouth.

Parker sinks down into the chair with her present. Hardison comes around to watch her open it. She wonders what he gets from her face when he watches her like that. Rip, tear, ragged paper edges, open.

It’s a vibrator. Slim, squiggly, gunmetal gray, like a lockpick. She’s confused for a moment, then she hears Sophie’s voice: He likes having sex with you. He wants to make you feel good.

“Thanks!” she says. “I don’t really like vibrators. They make me feel like my skin is going to buzz right off.” Hardison’s eyes widen and the corners of his mouth turn down and that’s hurt. She adds, quickly, “But I like using them on other people!”

Hardison’s face goes in all directions and now she’s not sure what she’s seeing anymore. “Um. Does that even work on dudes?”

Parker thinks about it. Alice White made Peggy from the jury very, very happy with a vibrator. She thinks Parker could do the same thing with Hardison. Men and women aren’t nearly as different as most people seem to think they are. “I don’t know. Wanna find out?”

“Uh.” He smiles a little, but he also looks nervous. “Okay, sure.”

“Take off your clothes,” says Parker.

“Right now? We’re doing this right – “ Parker takes her own shirt off, hoping he’ll get the right idea. “Yeah, okay. Yeah, we’re doing this.”

Hardison gets out of his clothes and Parker gets the vibrator out of its packaging. She hits the on button and oh yes, batteries are included. Hardison stares at it until she turns it back off.

Parker walks a circle around him, holding the vibrator, trying to think of a good spot to start. She stops in front of him and pulls his head down for a kiss. She keeps going until he makes those little hmm noises, so she knows he’s distracted, then she turns the vibrator on and presses it to his nipple.

The hmm gets higher-pitched, louder, and she pulls back because she’s not sure what that means without his face. “Was that a good noise or a bad noise?”

“That was a good but weird noise.” Hardison smiles and takes the back of her head in a huge hand. “Do it again.”

They kiss, and Parker vibrates one nipple or the other, hearing his deep smooth voice change with different settings and pressure. She wants to experiment with him, like she plays with a lock, listening for the tumblers falling into place. She imagines bringing it on a job, pressing it to his nipple through his shirt to see if he can still focus on his computer screen. If Eliot saw, he’d bat her hand away and tell them to save it for private time, but he’d be smiling, just a little. How does she know he’d be smiling? She giggles a little through the kiss.

Hardison pulls away. He’s grinning. “What are you laughing about?”

“Thinking about what would happen if I brought this on a job and poked you with it.”

“Eliot would facepalm so hard he’d leave permanent marks on his hand. He’d never let that one go.”

“I think he’d like it.” Hardison’s eyes widen when she says that, and his cock stiffens up some. Hmm. Interesting. She wonders what that means. “He’s happy that we started dating. And he likes sexy things, and has no sense of boundaries.”

“You’re one to talk.”

“Do I make jokes about getting naked with models?”

“I wish you would.”

“I’ve never been naked with a model.”

The corner of Hardison’s smile curls up: a smirk. “I’m not sure Eliot has, either.”

“Maybe he has. He does that thing with his eyes that makes women smile at him.”

“What thing with his eyes?”

Parker takes off her bra. Hardison watches her like he’s trying to bring her closer with just his eyes instead of his arms. She says, “You know. The thing you’re doing right now.”

Hardison smiles wider. “Oh yeah. That thing.” He reaches out, and she lets him pull her in. They kiss. Parker opens her mouth for his tongue and sucks on it hard, just to feel him go nnnngh, his face buzzing with the sound of it. Hardison could kiss like this forever, but Parker is too impatient. She steps back and circles him again, thinking of the next place to press her vibrator.

She gives him a poke in the bellybutton with the vibrator on, and he makes a funny little squeak and jumps back a little. Parker laughs. She pokes the inside of his knee, which makes him yelp again. “Is this sexy time or ‘let’s poke Hardison’ time?”

“Both.” Parker falls to her knees, and hello there Hardison’s cock, she thinks, giving it a friendly kiss. Hardison makes this breathy laugh and Sophie’s voice tells her firmly that it’s the good kind of laugh, not the mean kind, so Parker leans her head against Hardison’s solid thigh, turns on the vibrator, and presses it to the smooth skin between his balls and his ass.

“GAH,” says Hardison. He stumbles backward and falls onto the chair so hard he almost knocks it over. Parker runs over to hold the chair steady.

“Whoa. Okay,” Hardison says, blinking a few times like he’s checking whether this really happened. “Maybe we should have tried that lying down.”

Parker starts to laugh.

“What are you laughing at?” Hardison says, but his eyes are smiling, so she knows he thinks it’s funny too.

“Just imagining what Eliot would do if he saw that,” she gasps out between giggles.

“Why do we keep bringing up Eliot during sex?”

“You started it.”

“No, you started it. You talked about using that thing on me during a job.”

“I could have used it on you in the van. Eliot didn’t have to be there.”

A silence falls; Hardison grins. “You’re right, though. He’d laugh his ass off at us.”

Parker rests her chin on Hardison’s thigh. “He’d say, ‘Dammit, Hardison! You let your girlfriend poke you in the crotch with some high-tech doohickey while you’re standing in the middle of the living room? What’s wrong with you?’”

“’You kids with your fancy gadgets,’” Hardison says, making his voice all gruff like Eliot’s, “‘I do sex the old-fashioned way, with just me and my big muscle-y body.’”

“You really think he’d be like that? I bet he’d use gadgets if someone asked him really nicely.” Parker tilts her head and says in a high voice, “‘Oh Eliot, your big muscle-y hand would look even better with a dildo in it!’”

Hardison’s voice drops. “You like dildos?”

“Yeah, as long as they don’t buzz. They come in different shapes and colors. It’s fun. I have a blue one with ridges on it.” She thinks about Eliot holding her dildo and giggles some more. It’s funny, but it’s also sexy, and she’s getting really excited to touch Hardison some more. “He’d say it looks like an alien’s penis.”

“’Of course you’d have a dildo that looks like an alien dick, Parker,’” Hardison says in his Eliot voice. “But yeah, he’d use it anyway. If a pretty face asked him to.” He reaches out and cups Parker’s cheek. “Why are we still talking about Eliot?”

“It makes sense. We’re doing sexy things, and Eliot is sexy.” Hardison’s eyebrows dip down in the middle, like he does when Parker wants to do something he’s worried will get her in trouble. Uh oh. “You said when we talked about rules that it’s okay to think sexy things about other people. Right?” Parker hopes she has that right. She committed all the rules to memory. She hasn’t done much dating, and she doesn’t want to mess this up. “You thought our mark from last week was hot. You were definitely thinking sexy things.”

Hardison looks away. He’s shifting his weight in the chair from one buttcheek to the other, shift shift shift. Embarrassed again. “Oh, uh, well yeah, he was…”

“Oh. I meant the other one, the tall lady with the hair. But you’re right, he was hot too.”

“Wait, Parker, hang on, you know I’m not gay, right?”

“I never thought you were. Actually, I heard a girl say this word when we went to the university for that job last month, and I looked it up on that Urban Dictionary website you told me about, and I thought it was really cool. Pansexual. It means you find people sexy and it doesn’t matter what gender they are. Are you pansexual too?”

Parker feels the tension in Hardison’s thigh loosen up. No more shifting. Good. He shouldn’t be embarrassed. “Yeah. I guess. Something like that.”

Parker smiles and kisses his knee. “Cool. I’ve wanted to tell someone about that word ever since I found it but I couldn’t decide on a good time. Now we both have it.” She strokes his other leg with her fingertips. “So. Sexy things. Other people. That’s okay?”

“That’s what we said. Though I’m not sure the rules really covered Eliot.”

“I think we have to talk about the rules again. But can it not be now? I was getting excited about the sexy talk. Weren’t you?”

“Um.” His legs are tense again. Hardison is embarrassed. Parker doesn’t get it. They’ve already settled that they’re both pansexual, so what’s the big deal? Maybe he just needs to get back in the mood.

“Okay. Just listen. You can tell me stop. I just want to try.” Parker grips his legs, positions him so he’s sitting in the chair with his legs open wide. His cock is pointing straight ahead instead of up. She’ll see what she can do about that.

Parker nuzzles the inside of Hardison’s thigh with her cheek and looks up at him. She makes her eyes wide, like Eliot’s get sometimes when he watches her and Hardison. She says softly, “Imagine Eliot right here, just like this.”

Hardison’s eyes widen. His mouth falls open. His cock twitches, like it’s nodding its head yes. Cocks are funny like that. She gives it a fond kiss, and watches it swell up bigger. “He’d use a vibrator, if we asked him to.” Parker picks up the vibrator from where she dropped it on the floor. She turns it on and rubs circles in the same place behind his balls. She can feel his muscles shiver under her cheek, and he slides down a little on the chair. “Though we might have to tell him how to use it. You know him, though. He learns fast.”

Hardison starts to talk, his voice cracking a little. “I’d have to teach him how to make you come. Since I know how, and he doesn’t. I’d tell him how you – ah – like to ride my hand until it’s sore.”

“Mmm. Eliot has really strong hands. I’d love to take one between my legs and see what he does.” She dials up the vibration, and licks off the drop of precome shining at the tip of his cock. “I bet he gets really growly when he’s turned on. ‘Come here, Parker, let me fuck you with my hand,’” she says, making her voice go gravelly.

“I – I think he gets turned on watching us spar,” Hardison says. “When he’s teaching us how to fight. He watches us wrestle on the ground and gets that half-smile on his face – unh.” Parker is moving her hand up and down his cock. It’s a reward, because now she’s thinking about testing out her new takedown on Hardison, the way she straddled him on the floor, and the spark in Eliot’s eyes, so hot and blue, and she feels heavy between her legs, like Eliot’s hand is there already, thick and callused and gentle. Unless she asks him not to be.

Hardison’s face is so bright she can barely look at it, shining with everything he feels, and suddenly Parker needs friction on her clit so bad she could scream. She gets up, draws one last circle around Hardison’s nipple with the vibrator, then turns it off and puts it down. She hooks her thumbs in her waistband, and her pants and underwear hit the floor too. She clamps her legs around Hardison’s long thigh and closes her hand around his cock again. He leans forward, because she’s rocking her clit hard against him now, and he likes to hear her gasp.

Parker rests her forehead against Hardison’s, breathes in the air he breathes out, tries to keep the rhythm going on his cock while she burns inside with how good it all is. She tries to imagine what Eliot would do if he were here, but she can’t, because he would just do whatever he thought they wanted from him. “Eliot would do anything, you know,” she pants. “Anything we asked him to. Even just stand there and watch us like this – like he does when we spar – all turned on and hard, just watching and waiting – ah…”

And that’s it, right there, like tumblers clicking into place, the safe giving up its secrets with a sigh. Parker’s words take Hardison there, right into her imagination, like they have one brain. His eyes are closed and he’s smiling and he’s there with Eliot’s hot blue stare on him. “Yes, yes, he’d – yes,” and warmth spills into the curve of Parker’s hand. She can smell it in the damp air between them, all chlorine and wet metal.

“Ngh,” she says, rolling her hips, riding the full-body shudders of Hardison’s orgasm like they’re hers. She rests her hand on his other thigh, marking him with his own come, a shiny smear on his dark skin.

Hardison looks up at her through his eyelashes, biting down on a warm slow smile. “Hey, you,” he says. “Want me to take care of you? You want to do yourself? Or you had enough for now?”

Parker smiles back, because Hardison remembered her rule: it’s hard for her to have an orgasm, and even when she can it’s sometimes too much, so he always has to ask if she wants one, and how she wants to get there if she does. Her legs feel shaky and her head feels light. She doesn’t want to float away, not completely, so she says, “I think that’s enough for now,” and curls up tight against him on the seat.

Hardison kisses slow, gentle trails along Parker’s neck, which makes her feel relaxed, because she can still see his face and try to read it. It’s so shiny with happiness she has to turn her eyes away to be able to think.

“We’re going to have to talk about the rules again,” Parker says. “I think we have to make some Eliot rules.”

Hardison makes a hmm sound against her throat. “Like what?”

“The number one rule is that he’s a part of our relationship. Even if he doesn’t go on dates with us or cuddle us or have sex with us. He’s part of why we’re here, and how we found each other. We can’t forget that.” She looks back at Hardison’s face to try to see his thoughts. His cheek is up against her collarbone but his eyes look far away. He’s thinking about someone who isn’t here: Eliot. “I hear his voice in my head, you know. When we go on dates. He tells me how to dress so you’ll do that thing with your eyes, and how to flirt. He helps me. He always helps us.”

“What if we.” Hardison stops. “Does it even work? With three people?”

“Don’t ask me. I don’t even know how it works with two people. I’m still learning.”

“You’re doing great. Sometimes I think I might be learning from you.” He smiles and shakes his head. “I think I just did.”

“You learned something about dating from me?” Parker says. This is exciting. Maybe she can tell Sophie about it, if it’s not too private. Sophie would be proud that she’d taught Hardison about relationships. “What is it?”

“That I can love someone for years and not even realize it.”

Parker laughs. She laughs so hard she knocks her head against the arm of the chair. Good thing it’s cushioned. “What?” says Hardison. “What’s so funny?”

“You didn’t know you love Eliot?” She has to fight through the giggles to get the breath to talk again. “I thought everybody knew that!”

“Hey, that’s not fair! The things that man puts me through, I must be crazy falling in love with him! How was I supposed to know?”

“You could have asked me,” says Parker. “I know what it’s like when you’re in love with someone. I’m the expert.”

“You didn’t know until Sophie finally caved and told you.”

“And I learned. Right?”

“And I learned too,” Hardison says, his voice soft. He wraps his arm around her and gathers her in, and she lets herself relax into it, because last time they cuddled she decided all the touching was too much and he let her leave and he wasn’t even mad. “Don’t forget that. You’re not the only one who has to learn, when it comes to this kind of thing. I find something new every day. So don’t forget that.”

Parker won’t. The next time she sees Hardison’s or Eliot’s face locked off, and she doesn’t know how to open it, she’ll know she isn’t alone. Learning how to listen to Hardison, to press her ear against him and hear the right combination, is scary sometimes but mostly _amazing_. Parker presses her palm against the steady thrum of Hardison’s jugular, and wonders, with a fluttering excitement in her chest, what it might be like to unlock Eliot, together.


	2. Circuit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Hardison makes declarations of love, Parker gives orders, and Eliot is completely on board with all of this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to [beyonces_fiancee](http://archiveofourown.org/users/beyonces_fiancee) and the good people of #antidiogenes for beta-reading and encouragement.

“Damnit, Hardison,” says Eliot, his teeth half-clenched. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

Parker stares at Eliot. When Hardison told her he loved her, she felt like she was falling off a building without ropes or a harness. How could Eliot just be all clenched-up _annoyed_ when he just found out Hardison and Parker loved him?

Hardison’s eyes widen. He leans backward a little. “Hold up. Are you with someone else? Are we too late or something?”

Eliot rolls his eyes. “No. ‘Course not. What I mean is, you let me go out and flirt with all those women when we’re out on jobs, when I could have been getting it on with you two instead? How is that fair?”

“Oh!” Parker says. “Does that mean you’re gonna flirt with us instead? I’ve always wanted to see what the flirty thing with your eyes looks like up close.”

“Instead?” says Hardison. “I don’t think we could get Eliot to stop flirting with anyone in a skirt even if we – ”

“I’ll stop flirting, if you want me to,” says Eliot, and Hardison rocks back a little again, which means he’s surprised, but Parker isn’t surprised, because it’s just like she said: Eliot would do anything for them. “Just – I’m not good at romance, okay? It doesn’t work out too well for me. Just want you to know what you’re asking.”

“That’s okay. Hardison and I aren’t good at romance either. Sophie tells me that all the time.”

Eliot’s eyes get wide like he’s scared, and Hardison says, “What, you think we were gonna date each other without ever calling Sophie for help? I was hyperventilating into the phone right before our first date. I kept asking her if maybe I should’ve taken her out on a heist instead.”

“We did that on our second date,” Parker says.

Eliot narrows his eyes a little. “Did you ask Sophie for help before this? Telling me?”

“No,” Parker says. “We’re not sure if she’s ready to handle the whole threesome thing. We’ll tell her about it after. If it goes well. Which it will. Right?”

Hardison looks at her. They both look at Eliot. He licks his lips. “Yeah. I’d say this is going well. Though if it all goes to hell because of something I did, you two should stay with each other after. I won’t take it personally.”

Parker looks back at Hardison. “We should tell him about our first Eliot rule.”

Eliot’s eyes widen again. Is he scared? Parker understands why he’d be afraid of Sophie, but she doesn’t get why he’d be scared of rules. It’s good to know the rules, even if you’re going to break them. _Especially_ if you’re going to break them.

“It was Parker’s idea,” Hardison says, which doesn’t make Eliot’s eyes any more relaxed. “Hey, it’s a good rule! Rule number one: you’re part of this relationship, whether we’re dating you or not.”

“Good,” says Eliot, his eyelids heavy and smooth now, shadowing the blue of his irises. So _that’s_ what the sexy eyes look like up close. “’Cause you ain’t getting rid of me.”

Parker’s glad Eliot’s not asking if there are any more rules. They agreed they weren’t going to tell him rule two, at least not right away: Eliot is not allowed to die for us. They had to make that rule, since Eliot’s job is dangerous and he likes to, or maybe needs to, protect them, but he wouldn’t like to hear it.

“Getting rid of you is the exact opposite of the plan,” says Hardison, and it really is interesting to watch Hardison’s eyes get all droopy at the corners like that when he’s looking at someone who isn’t her. It’s not the same as the flirty look, where the skin goes up around his eyes. This is open, soft, every muscle in his face relaxed. Parker knows what that’s like. It’s so hard to let go around people who aren’t _them_.

“Come here,” Eliot says. There’s a rasp in his voice, like he gets whenever he talks about what Sterling did to her and Hardison, which she always thought was fear of losing them, but now she thinks is also a gut-deep hunger to keep them close.

They both come, crowding into his space, and his spine stiffens. Hardison stops short. He must see it too. “Hey, man, it’s okay,” he says. “We’re in my apartment. You’ve seen my security systems. And Parker’s checked all the ways in and out more times than I can count. We’re all good. You can relax.”

Eliot breathes out slowly. They’re so close Parker can feel it on her face. She likes to hear the way he breathes when he fights, for practice or for real. He does it like every breath is for a reason. She knows the reason for this one, and that makes something pulse inside her like a second heartbeat.

They all try to kiss each other at the same time. Well, Parker’s pretty sure she didn’t _mean_ to go for Eliot and Hardison at the same time, but that seems to be what’s going on. Their noses and jaws bump against each other. Parker’s mouth bounces off Hardison’s chin. She giggles, and that sets off the others. She can feel their sides quaking and rumbling against hers, an all-around hug of low vibrations.

“Let’s try that again,” says Hardison, “one at a time.”

“Me first!” Parker shouts, and pounces on Eliot.

“Hey!” says Hardison, trying to elbow her aside, but she clings to Eliot like a climbing wall and crushes her lips against his. Hardison’s kisses are sucking-slick and patient, but Eliot’s are hard, fierce pulls at her mouth. Parker feels warmth against her side, and pulls back a little to find that Hardison attached to Eliot’s neck, kissing hot bruises into his skin.

Parker returns to her biting battle of kisses with Eliot. She decides that whoever gets the other one’s mouth redder wins, though she doesn’t know what Eliot thinks winning means. His teeth trail along her tongue, and she wriggles against him. At the same time, she hears Hardison’s lips come off Eliot’s neck with a pop. She feels a rumble in Eliot’s chest. Parker giggles into Eliot’s mouth, and he rasps in her ear, “What’s so funny?”

“You purr when we pet you. Just like a cat.”

Hardison rests his cheek on Eliot’s shoulder and laughs.

“I do not purr.” Eliot’s eyebrows are curving down in the middle but the muscles around his mouth are relaxed, so Parker knows he’s not really upset.

“I like it,” says Hardison. “Don’t you, Parker?”

“It’s sexy. It’s not like he’s a kitten. More like a big jungle cat. Rowr.” She starts to nibble on Eliot’s ear. “Kiss him, Eliot. He wants a turn.”

Eliot’s eyes flick up and down Hardison’s face, like he’s checking out all the possibilities. Parker’s seen that on his face before, but never combined with that heavy-lidded sexy look in his eyes. It’s exciting. She sucks hard on Eliot’s earlobe, distracting him so that Hardison can make the first move. The secret is that she went first so that Hardison could really take his time.

Hardison kisses slow but firm, his hand rooted at the back of Eliot’s head so he can’t even think about pulling away. Parker scrapes her teeth along the corner of Eliot’s jaw and smells spit and hears Hardison’s happy hums and feels that purr again in Eliot’s chest, and those are mostly because of Hardison, but they’re also because of her.

Parker latches onto Eliot’s collarbone with her teeth. She can feel him start to rock his hips against Hardison, and she would love to see for herself exactly how hard he is right now, but this is all moving quickly toward sex and there are some things Eliot needs to know. She pulls away and says, “Stop. Eliot needs to hear more of our rules.”

Eliot and Hardison ended the kiss as soon as Parker said “Stop,” which makes her feel safe, and less bad for interrupting. Eliot raises his eyebrows and says, “I never thought you’d be so big on rules, Parker.”

“Rules are important. How do you think I jump off tall things all the time without hurting myself? I have rules for how to fall.”

Eliot nods, and his face is focused, but Parker notices his hand roaming up and down Hardison’s side, like he can’t help himself, and Parker likes that but she says, “I said _stop_ , Eliot. Pay attention.”

Eliot’s hand falls to his side, and something in the way he gathers himself up makes Parker think of a soldier coming to attention. Hardison’s eyes fix on her face. Now that’s more like it. “See, this is something you need to know: I get turned on by feeling in control. Actually, that’s the only way I get turned on.”

Neither of them ask why, which is good, because Parker’s not going to explain. Hardison smirks at Eliot and says, “It’s really hot.”

Eliot’s face is locked off; Parker can’t break in. She looks down at his pants and sees he’s still half-hard, which is nice, but it doesn’t tell her all that much. She says, “The most important rule is that you have to tell me what you’re thinking. I’m not so good at faces so if you don’t tell me things I might not figure them out.”

Eliot nods. Hardison elbows him. “What?” says Eliot.

“Man, can’t you take a hint? She wants to know if you’re cool with the her-in-control thing.”

Parker silently thanks the universe for giving her Hardison.

Eliot’s throat ripples as his Adam’s apple bobs up and down. His eyes move slowly from Hardison to Parker. Finally, he says, “Yes, ma’am.”

Parker’s had more than one fantasy about telling him what to do, but she never imagined the rush she feels now from Eliot calling her _ma’am_ , as if she were someone important. She feels a smile stretching her face.

“I must be crazy, going along with this,” Eliot says. “Anything I need to know about you, Hardison?”

“Just do what Parker says and I’m sure you’ll do just fine. She knows what I like.”

Eliot lets out a held breath. Parker could almost swear he’s disappointed. Well, he’ll just have to wait to find out what Hardison’s into. She thinks he’s going to like it.

Hardison elbows Eliot again, gentler this time. “What about you, Eliot, hmm? Got anything to share with the class?”

“I think I could go for just about anything, as long as it’s you two doing it,” says Eliot, and his tongue flicks across his lips, already red and swollen from their kisses. He looks at Parker through his eyelashes. “If you don’t mind, ma’am, can we skip to the part where we all have sex?”

“Sure!” says Parker. Eliot flashes his teeth in a fierce smile and reaches for Hardison’s shirt. “Nuh uh, wait. This’ll all go much better if I show you what to do first.”

Eliot drops his hands and rolls his eyes to the ceiling. “Believe it or not, I have touched another man’s chest before.”

“Okay,” says Parker. “That does help. But you’ve never touched Hardison’s chest before. Hardison, take off your shirt and come here.”

Hardison does, of course. She has him well trained.

“Hey, what about me?” says Eliot.

“Stay there. I’ll tell you when it’s your turn.” She waits.

Eliot’s not like her. He doesn’t have to be told to figure it out. “Yes, ma’am.”

The rush of those words makes her skin tingle. She smiles at him. “Watch. Hardison’s really ticklish on his sides.”

“Hey!” Hardison shouts as she dances her fingers along his sides.

She lets him laugh and squirm a little. “I had to show him. Otherwise he might tickle you by accident and distract you from the sex.”

“You don’t know what you just did. You’ve given him a weapon. He’s gonna use it against me, and I will blame you.”

“Well, he’s not going to use it during sex unless I say he can. Right, Eliot?”

Eliot smiles. His eyes look up and down Hardison’s chest. “Yes, ma’am.”

“If that was supposed to make me feel better, you really – nnnngh.”

Parker rolls Hardison’s nipple between thumb and forefinger, and his sentence cuts off with a groan. “Hardison’s nipples are like _magic_. One time I spent twenty minutes licking them and he shouted like I was sucking his cock instead.”

Eliot’s eyes get very distant when she says that. She wonders what he’s thinking about. “Your turn,” she says, and pulls him forward by the wrist. He goes along with it, his other hand already reaching for Hardison. She likes knowing that she could never drag him anywhere unless he let her do it.

Hardison groans again, louder, as Eliot’s head bends toward his chest, hand anchored on his side. Parker can’t see what Eliot’s doing because of all the hair, so she holds it back from his face with her hand. She watches his red lips move against brown skin, listens to the soft lapping sounds of his tongue and the ragged edge to Hardison’s breaths. She lets her fingers tangle through Eliot’s hair and pulls, just to see what he’ll do.

His jaw clenches, and his eyebrows come together. “Not like that,” he says roughly. “Closer to the roots. Pain’s less sharp that way.”

Parker will remember that. Rule: no sharp pain for Eliot. But other kinds of pain could be okay. She massages Eliot’s scalp with her fingertips. His face smooths out, and his licks to Hardison’s nipple become slow and regular. Hardison breathes deep, in time with Eliot’s tongue, smiling on the exhales. It’s good viewing. Parker pulls on the roots of Eliot’s hair.

A sharp breath rushes from Eliot’s nose. His eyes fall closed, and he bites down on Hardison’s nipple. Hardison’s chest shudders and he shouts with more of a squeak than he’d ever admit to.

Parker pulls on Eliot’s hair again, harder, and he tilts his head back, his breath shivering out. He looks at her sideways and his voice rumbles deep in his chest: “Thank you, ma’am.”

Over the roar in her ears, Parker says, “We’re sucking Hardison’s dick next.” She looks up at Hardison, who’s slack-jawed, wide-eyed, looking down at Eliot’s face and her hand tangled in his hair. He seems to notice her watching him and meets her eyes. His eyes are like lasers, and he pulls her in for a hard, wet kiss, sucking hard on first her lower and then her upper lip. Parker nips at the edge of Hardison’s ear and says, “Pants off.”

She hears that satisfying soft thud of jeans hitting the floor and presses down on Eliot’s shoulder so they’re both around eye level with Hardison’s pale pink briefs , which Eliot inspects at first like he’s afraid they’re going to infect him, until he sees the wet spot around the head of Hardison’s cock. His eyes lock there and his lips part.

“I can’t wait to teach you how to do this,” Parker says. “I love giving Hardison blowjobs, but there’s all kinds of things I can’t do because my mouth’s too small. I bet you could do them.”

Eliot circles his mouth with the tip of his tongue. “What did you have in mind?”

“He likes it when I hum while I suck, but I can only suck on the head, and even then not for long because my jaw starts to hurt and I don’t like it. But you could really get on there and…” Parker presses her face against the damp spot on Hardison’s briefs. “Mmmmm.” Hardison’s hips stutter forward a little, but she’s already told him she hates it when he thrusts into her face, so he holds it back, but she can feel the tension in his thigh from the effort it takes. She kisses the inside of his thigh to thank him, sucking hard enough to leave a bruise, though his skin is too dark to see it.

“He likes it when you keep a good grip on the base,” Parker tells Eliot. “The rest is kind of hard to explain. I remember it in my muscles, you know? Like how to do a flip, or take a fall.”

“Yeah. I know,” says Eliot. “I think I’ll have a good enough time figuring it out for myself.” The corners of his eyes turn up. “Believe it or not, I have sucked another man’s dick before.”

“I never said you didn’t,” says Parker, feeling a little confused, but Eliot’s fingers are already hooked in Hardison’s waistband and pulling down. His briefs are around his knees now, and Eliot looks down. His eyebrows rise.

“What the hell, Hardison,” he says. “You _manscape_?”

“He trims. I like it. It looks neat and it feels all smooth.” Eliot’s eyebrows are coming together, and Parker worries that might be a bad sign, so she adds, “I’m sure your cock is nice too! You can have hair. You’re good at having hair. And Hardison’s good at not having it.”

“Nothing wrong with a little personal maintenance,” says Hardison. “Which you ought to know a thing or two about, the way your hair looks so shiny all the time.”

“I have to brush it, or it gets tangled. That’s just common sense.” Eliot looks so silly arguing on his knees in front of Hardison that Parker feels a giggle rising at the bottom of her throat.

“Common sense, huh? I guess that’s why your hair goes down to your shoulders even though someone could grab it in a fight.”

“You ever see anyone grab my hair? That’s right, you haven’t, ‘cause I don’t let ‘em get that close. And if anyone does try to grab my hair, I break their goddamn neck.”

“You let Parker grab your hair just now.”

“That was for sex. That’s different.”

Parker gets impatient, because Eliot is still not actually doing the sex she wants him to, so she licks along a vein on the underside of Hardison’s cock. “Shit,” Hardison gasps.

That seems to get Eliot with the program. He seals his mouth around the head of Hardison’s cock and says “Hnnnnn,” around it like it’s the best thing he’s ever tasted. Hardison’s breath chokes off and his legs tremble. Eliot lowers his head, and Parker was right about his mouth, because Hardison’s cock is disappearing right into it. She stares at his cheeks as they hollow and bulge. Eliot grunts and murmurs around it like he’s trying to concentrate, and Hardison moans so loud Parker can feel his thigh vibrate with it against her cheek.

Eliot grips the base of Hardison’s cock and sinks down until his lips meet his hand. His face is a little pink with the effort, but he stops to look up at Hardison, his eyes blue like the end of a hot arc welder. Hardison looks down and there’s so much there that Parker has to turn her eyes away. She has a guess, and when she looks at the crotch of Eliot’s jeans she’s almost sure it’s true: pleasing them turns Eliot on like being in control turns Parker on.

Parker hears a slick sound, and she looks up to see Eliot with the head of Hardison’s cock in his mouth, licking and humming with his eyes mostly closed. She can see the shadows of his eyelashes on his cheek. Hardison’s hand comes down to rest on Eliot’s head, not pushing or pulling like Parker would, just holding. Parker stands up and kisses Hardison, feels him moan into her mouth.

Suddenly, she needs Eliot stripped down, so she can watch his cock twitch and leak as he sucks Hardison. “Eliot, take your clothes off.”

Eliot pulls off with a pop. His lips shine with spit. It takes him a moment to pull himself together enough to speak. “I ain’t getting naked with the blinds up. I’ve seen from Hardison’s security tapes just how many cameras there are out there.”

Hardison’s eyes widen. He looks to the open window, the city lights streaming in, and bolts toward his bedroom. “Shit, man! I forgot! You two distracted me with the sexy!”

Parker trades a smile with Eliot and follows him to the bedroom. Hardison has a big bed, and his curtains are drawn. Parker takes off her shirt, not because she cares all that much who sees her naked from outside, but because she wants to play with her nipples while watching Eliot and Hardison together. Bras are annoying, anyway.

Eliot’s stripping even faster than Parker can at her best, which is impressive, especially since he seems really distracted by her breasts. Then again, he doesn’t have a bra to deal with. Parker wraps an arm around Hardison’s waist and they both take a moment to just look at Eliot, the flush across his chest, the drops of precome beading on the head of his cock, the tiny smile turning up his mouth.

“Turn around,” Parker says.

“Gonna check my teeth next? I ain’t some stud horse.” But Eliot still has that little smile on, and he turns around. And oh, that view is worth it.

“Damn,” says Hardison, and steps forward to squeeze his asscheek. Eliot tilts his head up to look at Hardison. Before Parker has any idea what’s about to happen, he whirls around, pushes Hardison back on the bed, and bites a kiss into Hardison’s inner thigh. “The fuhhh…” Hardison starts to say, trailing off into ragged breaths as Eliot trails kisses upward and inward.

Parker sits on the bed next to Hardison and gently pinches her nipples. Now this is the good stuff. “Take your time,” she says. “I want to see how long you can keep it going. Don’t let him come until I say so.”

Eliot looks at her sideways and smirks. “Could take a while, ma’am. I like a challenge.”

Parker grins and traces a circle around her nipple. Eliot’s eyes follow her fingertip like he’s hypnotized. “I’m not going anywhere,” she says.

Hardison groans. “I am so screwed.”

“Yup, that’s the plan,” says Eliot, and his head bobs down. His hair is going everywhere again, and Parker can’t see.

“We need to keep hair ties in here,” she mutters, and scoots right up against Hardison’s side so she can grab onto Eliot’s hair and still have a hand free to squeeze her nipples. And mmm, yes, she loves to see Eliot’s eyes closed like that, the motions of his hand and mouth steady and sure. She looks up at Hardison’s head, tilted back, mouth open, watching her back, and it’s like a closed circuit between the three of them.

Parker pulls at the roots of Eliot’s hair again, to see how that changes what he does. He isn’t quite expecting it, which just goes to show how focused he is on sucking cock, because Eliot is always so aware of everything going on around him. He breathes out hard through his nose and goes “Gnnn,” around his mouthful, and that makes Hardison’s hips buck against the bed. He reaches for Parker’s waist and holds on, and the searing warmth of his touch makes Parker need to tweak her own nipple extra hard. She gasps with the feeling, and both Eliot and Hardison look sideways to watch her, and it’s this endless circuit where the energy keeps going around and building and changing them as it goes.

Hardison is taking those hard, even breaths that mean he’s going to come soon, and Parker’s not connected enough; she needs more touch. She pulls Eliot off Hardison by the hair. “Time out,” she says. “My turn.”

Eliot rests his chin on Hardison’s leg. “Gonna let me fuck you, Parker?”

“Yeah,” says Parker. “With your tongue.”

Hardison puts a hand over his eyes and groans. “You two aren’t careful, I’m gonna come just from watching y’all.”

Parker wriggles out of her pants and underwear. Eliot watches every motion, and Hardison watches Eliot watching with a funny little smirk on his face. It is funny how focused Eliot gets on her naked body, like anybody could walk in the room and he wouldn’t even know, though of course he would. It’s funny, and sexy, so Parker lies back and spreads her legs apart, feeling the air in the room move across the damp on her vulva and her inner thighs.

“I love oral sex,” Parker says, “though it’s hard for me to come, so don’t feel bad if it takes a long time.” She’s never understood why other people should feel bad for the way her body works, but everyone she’s ever slept with has reacted that way, even Hardison at first, so she tries to explain. “You can tag-team with Hardison.”

Hardison and Eliot share a look, then Hardison smiles at Parker. “Eliot and I make a great team.”

“Okay,” says Parker. “Show Eliot what I like.” She spreads her legs wide so both Hardison and Eliot can get their heads between them. Hardison kneels by the side of the bed, while Eliot lies on his stomach on the bed, propped up on his elbows to watch. She reaches for his hair again, this time just to feel it between her fingers.

“You gotta go slow,” says Hardison. “With me you got right on it, and that’s great as far as I’m concerned. But you can’t do that with Parker. Build up to it, right? Watch.”

He starts at the inside of Parker’s knee, pressing sloppy kisses into the soft skin there. Already Parker squirms in frustration, though she knows it’s not as bad as it could be: one time, Hardison started at her instep.

He works his way up, slowly, with lots of loud sucking, and it tickles in the best way. Eliot gets the idea and starts kissing inside her other thigh. She’s never had this double assault before, and her hips can’t seem to stay still. Her hand clamps and unclamps in Eliot’s hair, and she says, “Hardison, ah, ah…”

Hardison pulls his mouth off her thigh, leaving a slick purple imprint of his teeth behind. “Hardison, what?” he says, grinning up at her.

It’s a game of theirs, when he does this. He never makes it to her vulva unless she asks him to. Forcefully.

“Nothing,” she says. “Carry on.”

“Check this out, Eliot.” Hardison puts his mouth very close to her clit and just _exhales._ The feel of his breath on her wet skin makes Parker whine high in her throat, and really she should find it embarrassing, but she just can’t, what with the way Hardison and Eliot grin like fools at each other. Eliot puts his face near the crease where her leg meets her torso – which by now is nearly as wet as her cunt – puckers his lips, and blows. Her hips arch off the bed and her fingers tighten in his hair. Hardison holds her leg down and kisses her close enough to her labia that her pubic hair tickles his cheek. He looks up at her and raises his eyebrows.

Parker bares her teeth. “Go on.”

Hardison takes a new tack, moving up to kiss the skin just inside her hipbone. Eliot just rubs his cheek against her thigh like a cat. That makes Parker giggle, though it comes out much higher and breathier than usual. She loves the scrape of Eliot’s stubble against her thigh, the smoothness of Hardison’s cheek on her hipbone. Her inner muscles flutter and clench around nothing at all, and she feels tight and hollow at the same time.

“Hardison.” That comes out as more of a whine than Parker planned. “Maybe you should show Eliot how to tongue-fuck me.”

Hardison gives her hipbone one last biting kiss, then chuckles into her skin. “Yeah, babe. Whatever you want. Eliot, you with me?”

Eliot snorts. “What do you think?”

Hardison slides down so that her vulva faces him down like the barrel of a gun. “Lots of hard jabs first, then curve up and really get that G-spot. Watch.” And he thrusts into her with his tongue as hard as he can.

The heat and wet fill her suddenly, and she screams a little as it flicks in and out, cool-warm-cool-warm. Then there’s slow, firm pressure upward and inward, right where her vagina’s so sensitive, and she has to squeeze her eyes shut against the deep-down waves of warm goodness in her pelvis.

“That’s good, that’s good,” Parker remembers to say, because it’s as important that she tells them what she likes as the other way around. “Yes, yes, keep doing that, _yes_ – “

He says “Mmmm” to that and builds up harder, faster. The rhythm of his tongue just doesn’t quit, even when she thinks those warm silver waves can’t possibly soak deeper into her bones. There’s a high wavering sound in the air, and she thinks it might be coming from her.

That wonderful tongue leaves her, and Parker is suddenly very aware of how neglected her clit has been until now. Hardison says, “You look like a dude just pinned you to the mat in two moves. We haven’t even gotten to the main event yet.”

Parker opens her eyes, takes in Eliot’s face, and realizes that Hardison was talking to him. His pupils are huge, and he blinks hard, like’s trying to get the world to focus. “Goddamn,” he says hoarsely.

“The key,” says Hardison, “is BPM. That’s beats per minute, for all of you watching at home. Just about anything’s good, as long as you got the BPM right. Start slow, work your way up, and listen close. She goes totally quiet, that means the BPM’s too high, and you gotta start again at zero. Keep that up, and if you’re very lucky you’ll have lady-jizz all over your face.”

Eliot gets that dazed look again. “Parker squirts?”

“Sometimes. A man’s gotta have something to aspire to.”

Eliot asks Parker, “Can I try?”

Parker rests her head back against the covers. “Be my guest.”

Eliot’s eyes light up like he’s about to fight someone _really_ good. He curls his lips down to blunt his teeth, and nips at the edges of Parker’s labia. Her breath comes out shivery. “C’mere, Hardison,” she says, pulling his head to her chest. He nuzzles her breast, then goes for her nipple, just as Eliot starts to really suck on her labia with slow pulses of his tongue. “Oh,” she says. “ _Oh._ ” It feels like when she’s on a job, and she knows Hardison is watching the security tapes for her, and Eliot is at her back. They’ve got her. They’ve _got_ her.

Her clit is achingly hard, but still there’s nothing on it but Eliot’s hot breath, and she circles her hips, chasing any kind of feeling. Eliot growls and kisses her clit fiercely. Parker wails and grabs Hardison’s shoulder like she might fly off the bed if she doesn’t. Everything but the twin flames of Eliot’s and Hardison’s mouths on her feels very distant.

Eliot makes a seal around her clit and sucks. At the same time, Hardison starts teasing at her nipple with his teeth. Parker’s breath comes out in shaky sighs. She feels like she’s melting into them both, which would be scary if it were anyone but them.

“Ah, ah, please,” she says, and she feels Eliot’s growl in response, right against her clit. He starts flicking with his tongue, faster and faster. Hardison has her other nipple between his fingers now, twisting and rolling. The heat is so close to Parker’s skin she feels sweat breaking out everywhere. She clamps her thighs around Eliot’s head and rides him hard, fucking up against the edge of his teeth, _uh uh_ grunts rising from deep in her belly.

Hardison and Eliot are matching up so well it’s like she can’t even tell the difference between her nipples and her clit anymore. The world is made of sweet syrup, and she’s sinking into it, so deep she can’t breathe. Suddenly there’s cool air on her clit and her nipples, and Eliot’s just lapping slowly, so slowly at her cunt while Hardison rubs circles on her stomach.

“Yeah. Yeah, that’s it,” Parker says shakily. “I need a break.” She props herself up on her elbows. “Can you go another round on Hardison, Eliot?”

“My jaw’s starting to ache,” Eliot says, but there’s crinkles around his eyes that look like a smile, so Parker just has to ask.

“Is that a problem?”

“No, ma’am.” Eliot looks down at Hardison’s cock, which is just as hard and wet at the tip as it was before, and his Adam’s apple bobs in this throat.

Parker looks at Hardison too. “You think he might come just from going down on us?”

“Maybe,” says Hardison. “Let’s find out.”

Parker guides Eliot onto the bed by his wrist. “You don’t have to kneel on the hard floor,” she says, and Eliot scoffs, of course, but she likes the idea of making him comfortable even if he doesn’t. Hardison kisses him, slowly licking the taste of Parker from his mouth, then Parker gets a turn. She loves how slick and open his mouth feels from all the oral sex he’s done. And there’s more to come.

Parker arranges Hardison on the bed. “Try the spot right behind his balls,” she tells Eliot. “He likes that.” She’s glad Hardison’s bed is so stupidly big because there’s room for her to curl up beside him and kiss away the moans that rise up his throat as Eliot presses his knuckles against that spot, just like Parker told him to.

She kisses with her eyes wide open, even though Hardison’s are closed, because she needs to fill her head with so many pictures that it can’t float away when she’s getting ready for her orgasm to hit. If she just weighs herself down with the slide of Hardison’s lips against hers, with the wet sounds of Eliot’s mouth, she’ll be anchored, and she can let her body just _be_.

There’s sweat beading up along Hardison’s hairline. Eliot is doing that to him. She could do it to him, too, and suddenly she needs to. “Turn on your side,” she says, pushing on Hardison’s shoulder.

Eliot unseals his mouth from Hardison’s cock with a pop. “What’s happening?” His words are a little slurred, like he’s drunk or sleepy, though Parker’s never seen him either way.

“You’ll see,” says Parker. She reaches into Hardison’s nightstand and unwraps a dental dam. Hardison turns his head, and his eyes widen at the crinkling sound of the wrapper. She slithers down Hardison’s back, and stops for a moment to squeeze Hardison’s ass, because how could she not? Then she spreads him, pins the dental dam in place with her thumbs, and gives Hardison a good long lick. Her mouth tingles with the taste of spearmint. Hardison makes a deep sound in his belly, and from the other side of Hardison she hears a slurping sound.

Parker shifts so she’s holding the dental dam in place with one hand. She licks again, taking her time from bottom to top, and reaches over the curve of Hardison’s leg to find Eliot’s hand. Her fingers close around his wrist, and she moves them up to cup the back of his hand. Eliot grips back, and now Parker knows how he and Hardison worked together so well on her. She and Eliot hold hands, squeezing each other’s fingers in time with their mouths, so they alternate, like the two halves of a heart. The circuit is closed again, and Parker loses herself in the steady pulse of it.

The sounds Hardison makes start to come high and breathy from his throat. “He’s close,” Parker gasps to Eliot. “Let’s make him come.”

Eliot growls, and squeezes her hand hard, until his growls get muffled with a mouthful of cock. Parker jabs at Hardison’s hole with the point of her tongue, letting her spit flow everywhere because she just doesn’t care, she needs this to happen so much.

“Oh, fuck, _yes_ ,” says Hardison, and every muscle in his body seems to jerk, then loosen. Parker can feel his hole clenching and unclenching in a quick beat around her tongue. She feels herself whine in response, fluids leaking down her thighs. Eliot’s grip is a vise around her hand, and she wonders desperately whether he’ll swallow or spit or let Hardison come on his face. She doesn’t care which; she just needs to know.

Parker balls up the dental dam in her fist and tosses it on the nightstand next to its wrapper. Half-sitting, she can’t see Eliot spitting anywhere, and there’s no come on his face, so he must have swallowed. She wished she could have seen that. Next time, she tells herself.

She spoons up behind Hardison and kisses his ear, his cheek. Eliot scoots up to kiss Hardison on the mouth. His lips are chapped and his chin gleams, with Parker’s wetness or his own spit or both. Eliot can’t seem to make his mouth close; it slips and sucks sloppily, leaving shining trails on Hardison’s face.

Parker hooks her arm around Hardison and hauls him up to a kneel. “You stay there, Eliot.” She looks down at him. He’s lying spread-eagled on the bed, staring up at her and Hardison with huge, slow-blinking eyes. His cock looks purple and painfully hard. His hair is spread in a halo around his face. She’s never seen him so angelic. She wants to make him dirty. Use him.

“Kiss me,” Parker tells Hardison. “Wherever you want. Just kiss me.” And she straddles Eliot’s face.

At first she holds herself up so that he can only flick at her with the tip of his tongue, feather-light little kisses. Hardison frames her face with his huge hands and kisses her, probing her mouth deep with his tongue. Parker lowers herself on Eliot, rocks against the firm pressure of his lips, but Hardison holds her face steady so he can kiss and kiss and kiss.

Parker rides against the even strokes of Eliot’s tongue, humming her sighs into the seal of Hardison’s mouth. “Mmm, hmm, _hmmmm_ ,” she hears herself say, in time with every swipe of tongue against clit.

Eliot’s motions get faster, like a flutter. Parker feels pressure building under her skin. She feels larger than herself, and it’s wonderful, because sometimes she feels so small. She rolls her hips and starts fucking Eliot’s mouth, hard, until she can hear him breathing hard through his nose just to keep up. She has no sense of time. At some point, Hardison started kissing her nipple, his strong hand cupping her breast. The muscles in her thighs tremble and ache.

“Let’s turn over,” Parker somehow gasps out. “I need to…” Hardison grabs her under her armpits and lays her down. Eliot crawls between her open legs like there’s a magnet in his mouth pulling him straight toward her clit. “Fuck me,” she says. “I need your hand, Eliot, fuck me.”

“Two fingers should do it,” Hardison says.

His voice is so deep and smooth. Wet heat surrounds her clit again, and Parker says, “Talk to me.”

Hardison has one hand massaging the back of her neck, one hand tweaking her nipple. “What do you want me to say?”

Eliot spears her with two blunt fingers. Parker jerks and curls her hands in Eliot’s hair. “Anything.”

Hardison takes a second to watch and listen. Parker chokes back the little cries that rise up with every thrust of Eliot’s fingers and tongue. “I don’t know if you can see this,” Hardison says, “but Eliot’s humping the bed right now. Neither of us have touched him since we started, and _damn_ , is he desperate. Pretty sure I couldn’t hold out that long. And his jaw? It’ll probably be sore tomorrow, and he’ll know exactly why…”

It’s too much. It’s too much. Parker thinks of Eliot touching his jaw, wincing just the tiniest bit, and Hardison giving her that knowing smile because they know exactly how he got that way. For _them_. She can’t choke back her screams anymore. She pushes hard against Eliot’s face, the pressure releases, and it feels like everything inside her is flooding out.

Everything grays out. No confusion, no background roar, just pure feeling. Hardison and Eliot are still touching her. She can come back down. It’ll be fine.

Parker opens her eyes. Hardison is grinning. She feels wetness beneath her. “I squirted, didn’t I?”

Eliot’s head pops up from between her legs, clear fluid dripping from his chin. There’s even a little in his hair. He, too, is grinning like a fool. “Yeah. Yeah, you did.”

“Me first,” says Hardison, and he pounces, kissing away as much of Parker’s come as he can. Parker feels slow and heavy, like she almost never lets herself be. She looks down. Eliot’s still hard. He must be about ready to explode.

“Bring him here so I can kiss him,” says Parker. “You can finish him off. I just, I need to.”

Hardison understands. He lays a strangely pliant Eliot on his side and spoons up behind him. He lays his hand on Eliot’s hip and kisses the side of his neck. Parker grabs his hair and pulls him in for a kiss. Her eyes are closed, but she knows the exact moment when Hardison starts stroking him. He grunts, and presses his mouth harder against hers.

Parker pulls Eliot’s hair so that he’s looking down. She wants him to see Hardison’s big hand wrapped around him. She finds his hand, the fingers that were inside her, and sucks hard. “Aw, _fuck_ ,” Eliot says.

“You did good, Eliot.” Hardison’s voice is low in Eliot’s ear. Finally he’s figured out what his voice does to people. “You’ve been so good to us. Now you can just let go, mm-kay? You can let go.”

Eliot’s lids fall half-closed, but she can still see his eyes burning under them like banked blue flames. She moves her lips up and down his fingers in time with Hardison’s hand. “Fuck, fuck,” Eliot chants. “Ah, fuck, like _that_ , oh!”

His eyes screw shut, and come shoots on his belly and Hardison’s fingers. Hardison keeps stroking, and there’s another spurt, and another. Parker watches all the way through.

Eliot goes limp. “Shit,” he says, his voice muffled by a pillow. “I need a shower. I have Parker’s jizz in my hair.”

“It’s great, isn’t it?” Hardison says in his ear.

Eliot smiles against the pillow. “Yeah. It is.”

Parker pulls her mouth off his fingers. Eliot sits up. “You’ve got an in-suite, right? Thank God.”

Hardison watches him get up, with a very focused look in his eye. He’s getting the full rear view. “I don’t have whatever fancy shit you use on your hair to make it all voluptuous or whatever, but I got the basics.”

“Fuck you,” says Eliot, still smiling. He walks into the in-suite.

“Maybe next time!” Hardison calls after him.

Parker is lying in her wet spot. She thinks about ways to get someone else to lie in it. Maybe if she tells Eliot in her “I’m in charge” voice. Except she’s pretty sure that voice isn’t going to work when they’re not having sex.

“Hardison,” she says. “Come kiss me.”

That always works. Hardison comes over on hands and knees and rains down soft little kisses on her face. She giggles, grabs him by the shoulders, and turns them over. On top of him, she does the same thing back, pressing kisses to his nose, temple, lips, chin.

Hardison narrows his eyes at her. “You got me in the wet spot.”

Parker laughs into his neck.

Hardison gets up. “I’m getting a towel, you little minx!”

Parker decides she’s still won. She hates sleeping on towels. They’re too scratchy. She reaches for the covers wrinkled at the foot of the bed and pulls them up. The duvet cover is black with a galaxy pattern on it. Hardison is funny like that.

She wonders if Eliot will stay. She knows he won’t leave them, but that doesn’t mean he’ll stay, the way they are now. She knows Hardison will stay because he loves her and he says so all the time. He loves Eliot. He said that, too. But Eliot didn’t say anything like that. Parker can see that Eliot likes to say things with what he does instead of what he says, but she doesn’t know the language of what people say with their bodies, so she just can’t be sure.

The bathroom door opens with a rush of warm damp air. Hardison comes out with a towel draped over his arm.

“That took you longer than usual,” Parker observes.

Hardison rubs the back of his neck, and the corner of his mouth turns up. “Eliot’s showering in there. I got distracted.”

Parker can understand. She really wants to see that for herself, but her bones feel liquid and heavy, and she’ll get another chance. She’ll get so many chances. A bright little burst of excitement goes off inside her. This is only the beginning. “Get in here,” she says, holding up the galaxy duvet for him.

As Hardison lays down the towel, Parker notices that one of his arms is wet to the elbow. She wonders what Hardison did when he saw Eliot all dripping and naked. Did he reach for Eliot’s ass? His hair? His face?

Hardison gets under the covers and stares up at the ceiling. “Wow. We really just had sex with Eliot, didn’t we?”

Parker stares at him. “Yeah.” She doesn’t add: _duh_.

“It’s just kind of hard to believe. I’ve had fantasies about all kinds of wild things – screwing Princess Leia in space, screwing Han Solo in space, screwing both of them in space at the same time – but I never expected any of them to actually happen, you know?”

Parker thinks about how Eliot called her “ma’am,” the way Hardison knows exactly where her limits are and always lets them stand. She never used to let herself imagine things like that, just like how she made herself stop imagining a family. There’s no fantasy to compare to, but she still feels that unreality Hardison’s talking about. More quietly, she says, “Yeah.”

The bathroom door opens again. Eliot comes out, his hair frizzed out into little curls like it always does when it’s damp. It’s cute. He stops in the middle of the room like he’s not sure what to do next. Parker smiles at him. “Come here, lover boy.”

Eliot scowls. “Lover boy?”

“We’ve had sex with you, so we get to call you nicknames now. Not in front of Sophie and Nate, though. That would be weird.”

“Thank God for small favors.” Eliot gets in the bed on Parker’s other side. He kisses the point of her shoulder, then makes space between them, so that only his only point of contact is his hand on her hip, a warm weight. Parker gets it. He wants enough room so he can get up in a second if he has to. Hardison is cuddly enough for two people anyway.

“Thanks, Hardison,” Parker says, tucking her head in the crook of his arm.

“Thank _you_ ,” he says. “That was some damn good sex.”

“I didn’t mean thanks for the sex,” Parker says, and Hardison raises his eyebrows with the inner corners tucked down, which now she’s all too familiar with as hurt. “Though it was very good, so maybe I should say thanks for that too. What I meant was thanks for making this happen. You’re the only one of us who can actually, you know… say what you feel.”

“Like what? That I love you two idiots?”

“Yeah,” says Eliot, taking Hardison’s hand so that they rest, intertwined, on Parker’s hip. “That.”

And Parker closes her eyes, and lets herself hope that she’s found _two_ people who will stay.


	3. Trophies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Parker improvises sex toys out of items in Eliot's kitchen, and a good kinky time is had by all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to [beyonces_fiancee](http://archiveofourown.org/users/beyonces_fiancee) and #antidiogenes for beta-reading and encouragement. Warning this chapter for mention of past abuse.

Eliot comes into his apartment with raw knuckles and a welt on his cheekbone. Not for the first time, Parker imagines how she’d feel – how she’s felt – all beat up like that. She can’t walk around like it’s nothing, like Eliot does, that’s for sure. He carries pain so well. She wonders if he knows how beautiful he is when he does that.

Hardison says something about getting ice, but Parker doesn’t listen. She leans against the kitchen island next to Eliot, reaches out, and touches the welt on his cheekbone with her thumb, her fingers holding the side of his face. It feels rough and hot. “Does that hurt?” she says.

Eliot huffs out a laugh and makes that bright-eyed smile that he does when he’s proud of something he did. “Yeah.”

Hardison’s coming over with a Ziploc bag full of ice, and stops in front of them to stare, wide-eyed. “Oh my God. It’s been a sex thing this whole time.”

“It’s only been a sex thing for a week,” Parker says.

“No, I mean that thing you do where you poke at Eliot’s bruises and ask how they feel. You _like_ it. It’s a sex thing.” Parker and Eliot pass a look between them. He blinks a few times. Warmth fills her face. “You two didn’t even know! You’ve been playing kinky sex games all this time and you didn’t even know it.”

“Don’t worry, Hardison, we ain’t been playing kinky sex games without you. I’m not sure I’m ready to handle Parker without backup.” Eliot’s breath rushes out and his eyes fall closed as Hardison presses the bag of ice to his scraped-up knuckles. “Mmm. That’s good.”

“The pain doesn’t seem to bother you,” Parker says, “but you like it when Hardison puts ice on.”

“Pain’s just boring, mostly,” Eliot says. “Punch to the face – that’s not the boring kind. Waiting for scrapes and cuts to heal up – about as exciting as watching Hardison write code. Ice on my knuckles changes it up. Feels good.”

“Plus you like it when I touch your hands,” Hardison says, smiling.

Eliot’s eyes flick up and down Hardison’s body. “I like it when you touch other things too.”

“Dude, we’re on a job right now.”

“We don’t have anything to do until tomorrow,” says Parker. “Nate and Sophie are buttering up the mark tonight.”

“I should be going over the security tapes. You two are a bad influence.” But Hardison leans toward Eliot anyway, and puts his free hand on Eliot’s thigh. “Shame on you.”

“You two are the bad influence,” Eliot says. “I used to be a professional before I met you two. Never would’ve slept with my team.”

“Your team wasn’t us,” Parker says. She leans toward Hardison, puts a firm hand on the back of his neck, and kisses him. “You go ahead. I’m going to find some fun ways to hurt Eliot.” She bounces off the edge of the kitchen island. “Make sure to get his shirt off!”

“Don’t worry, he will,” says Eliot. “I’m a cheap date.”

Parker opens drawers in the kitchen at random, looking for inspiration. The knives are no good. She only knows how to use those to hurt people for real; Eliot taught her. The rolling pin could give a nice massage, probably, but that’s not what she’s after. She opens a drawer and sees a big wooden spoon. She could definitely whack him with that and not leave anything like real damage. Plus, it would make a fun noise. Parker picks it up. Behind her, she hears muffled groans from Eliot. She turns around to see what’s happening.

Hardison’s gripping Eliot’s face, his fingers and thumb anchored firmly at the corners of his jaw. He’s pulled Eliot’s head up and forward at an awkward angle, and kissing him like he doesn’t care whether Eliot can breathe or not. Eliot’s bare chest heaves as he draws air from his nose whenever he gets a chance between kisses. Hardison’s never been so forceful with Eliot before. He’s _learning_ from her. Parker is delighted. She comes closer to get a better look.

The two of them hear her come close and stop to look at her. Eliot’s jaw clenches, hard. He says, “Alec, off.”

Hardison takes his hand away, watching Eliot’s face closely. Eliot turns his head toward Parker, and in the same measured-out voice he uses to talk about weapons, he says, “No, Parker. Not that. Or a hairbrush, or a belt. Not ever.”

At first, Parker doesn’t understand what any of those things have to do with each other. Then she remembers the marks she saw sometimes on other kids in foster care. No foster parent ever hurt her that way, but she should have known better. Parker lets her arm holding the spoon go limp at her side, and looks away, because she can’t do this right and look him in the face at the same time. She says quietly, “I’m sorry, Eliot.”

“I’m sure you’ll think of something else,” Eliot says. “Alec? Back on.”

“You sure, babe?”

Eliot glares at him. “I ain’t made of glass. That half-choking thing was good, so you better go on doing it.”

Parker puts away the spoon. She’s going to hate it every time she sees it now, even when Eliot uses it to cook something delicious. Like when he used it to make potato salad at the barbecue he had on Sunday, which Parker is pretty sure was some kind of celebration about the three of them getting together, though Eliot would never admit it.

That barbecue was fun. Parker watched him cook while Hardison was out getting beer, chopping up the pineapple and tenderizing the meat. Oh! Now she has an idea. She searches through the drawers until she finds the meat tenderizers. They look like sets of five black plastic claws you can hold by a handle. Parker grabs them, and gives herself claws.

She comes back to Hardison and Eliot. Hardison’s given Eliot a break so he can gulp in air, his hand resting gently on the side of Eliot’s neck. She watches Eliot’s chest rise and fall with it. His eyes slowly slide from Hardison’s toward her. They widen when he sees the meat tenderizers. “Well,” he says. “Ain’t that interesting.”

“You look like Wolverine,” Hardison says. “That’s hot. You into it, Eliot?”

“Not sure. Willing to find out, though. Start light, okay?”

“Sure. But get away from the kitchen counter. I want more room.”

They move from the kitchen to the living room. Parker stays behind and eyes the abandoned bag of ice on the kitchen counter. She likes it when she comes in from outside and touches Hardison with her cold hands and makes him gasp. Ice would be like that, but even more. She takes the bag, too, because she’s sure she’ll come up with something fun to do with it.

In the living room, Hardison draws the blinds before they do anything else, remembering what happened last time. Parker puts the bag of ice on the coffee table. Then she walks up to Eliot and slowly drags the tips of the claws along his sides. Eliot lets out a slow hiss, and his eyes fall closed. Parker lets her arms drop to her sides and waits.

Eliot opens his eyes. “Did I tell you to stop?”

“You know the rules,” Parker says. “You have to tell me things, or else I won’t know.”

“How about this: I’ll tell you if I want you to stop.”

Hardison comes up behind Eliot and touches him on the shoulder. “That’s not fair to Parker, man. Imagine you have a hard time reading faces, like she does. Unless you’re licking her or thrusting into her or something, how does she know you really like it? You gotta give her a sign.”

“You’re better at talking than I am.”

“C’mon, no one’s gotta be Shakespeare here. Just say, ‘Mmm, that’s good.’”

Eliot sighs. His eyes soften. “It’s good, Parker. Keep going.”

Parker grabs Eliot’s sides with the claws and uses them to pull him in for a kiss. That puts a bit of a growl in his breath, and she can feel it humming through him still when she kisses him. She presses herself against his chest and wraps her arms around him. She drags one set of claws down his back, then the other.

Eliot jerks against her. She can feel him getting hard against her belly. She smiles into his neck. Warmth surrounds her from behind as Hardison gets in their space. His mouth latches onto the side of her neck. She gasps and claws at Eliot in reaction. He swears and bites down on her shoulder.

Parker wriggles out from between Hardison and Eliot, stopping to press kisses to their temples. “Get his pants off, Hardison.”

Hardison eyes the meat tenderizers. “I gotta say, I’m kinda curious.”

“Go easy on him, Parker,” Eliot drawls. “He’s a delicate flower.”

“That’s not what you said Sunday night,” Hardison says, smirking. Sunday night, Hardison fucked Eliot really hard over his desk while Parker lay blissed out on an orgasm.

“Both of you get your clothes off or I’m not clawing anybody,” Parker says.

That gets them moving, finally. Hardison’s already explained to her that the arguing is foreplay, but to Parker it’s just holding up the fun. She puts down the claws and takes off her own shirt and bra, because she likes how it feels when she squishes her breasts against Eliot’s or Hardison’s chest or back.

Parker walks a circle around Eliot and Hardison, watching them kick their pants and underwear off from around their feet. Hardison’s dick is softer than Eliot’s. She should do something about that.

Parker comes up behind Hardison and gently grabs his sides with her claws, pulling him up against her chest. Squish. The pressure against her breasts is so nice. Hardison hisses, then relaxes as she presses a hard kiss to the bony edge of his shoulder blade. She wraps her arms tighter around him and scratches his nipples. Hardison’s breath has a bit of a sob in it. Eliot grabs Hardison’s shoulders and kisses him. Parker feels his breath even out. Hardison really does like kissing a lot. She drags the claws lightly over his abs, feeling the muscles jump beneath them. She thinks Hardison likes it, but Eliot was right: pain is harder for him to handle. She gives his other shoulder blade a good bite, then peels away for another circuit around the two. His erection is coming along nicely.

“I think I get it,” Hardison says, sounding a little dazed and stupid, like he always does after lots of kissing. “It’s like she’s a tiger or something. Like being at the mercy of something big and dangerous, you know? It’s scary, but in a hot way.”

“Parker ain’t the only one big and dangerous around here,” Eliot says, low and silky. He pulls Hardison against him by the hips, then holds Hardison’s wrists together behind his back with one hand.

Parker digs the points of her claws into Eliot’s hip, and drags her other set of claws up the inside of his leg, right up to where it meets his body. “Shit,” Eliot says, and lets go of Hardison’s wrists. Parker grins. She pulls both sets of claws up his thighs, and he holds onto Hardison as his legs shiver.

“Hold onto him, Hardison,” Parker says. “I’m going to do it harder, and I don’t want him to fall over like you did that time.”

Hardison groans. “Did you have to bring that up?”

“You fell over while you were screwing? What happened?”

“Parker used a vibrator on me, okay? It was more intense than I thought it was gonna be.”

“I thought vibrators were for women.”

“Oh, trust me, they can do things to a dude. Or at least they can when Parker uses them.”

“So you let Parker poke you with some battery-powered doohickey while you were standing in the middle of the living room. What did you think was going to happen?”

Hardison catches her eye. “Is that…”

“Exactly what I told you he’d say?” Parker grins. “Yep.”

Hardison doubles over laughing. Eliot blinks as if something went _bang_ nearby. “Wait. So you poked Hardison with a vibrator, he fell over, and then you… talked about what I would say if I found out?”

Parker nods. “That’s when we came up with the first Eliot rule. We can’t really be us without you. Not even when we have sex.”

Hardison is still clutching his stomach laughing. Eliot put his hands on his hips and said, “What else did you say about me?”

“We had a fantasy about having sex in front of you and making you just stand there and watch.”

Eliot’s eyelids flutter. He licks his lips. Hardison says, “You know, I was really into it at the time, but now I’m not sure I wouldn’t just break down and tell you to join in.”

“ _I_ wouldn’t break down,” Parker says. “You like that idea, Eliot? Just standing there, watching us, all turned on and not allowed to touch?”

“Can’t say I _like_ it, exactly,” Eliot says hoarsely. “But yeah. I’ll do it.”

Parker looks at Hardison. “See? I told you.”

“You were right. And he is pretty damn good at the whole suffering in silence thing.”

“We’ll try it sometime,” says Parker. “But not today. I have plans. I need you to distract him.”

“Distract me from what? Mmmm.” Hardison frames Eliot’s face in his big hands and kisses him, slow and easy.

“Mmm. Nice,” says Parker. “Feel free to do that choking thing again. That was hot.” She rests the points of her claws on the tops of Eliot’s shoulders. Then she rakes them downward, all the way to his ass, hard.

“Aaahh,” Eliot gasps, but Hardison cuts him off with a firm hand on his throat. Parker can feel him breathing still, but he has to fight for it. She listens to the wet sounds of kissing and watches the welts she left on Eliot’s back fill in with red. She wraps her arms around him and presses herself against his back. The skin feels warmer than usual. She did that. She smiles against his skin and claws at the trail of hair between his navel and his cock. Eliot thrusts against Hardison, against the bar of his hand on his throat.

Parker unwraps herself. She pokes at one of the welts with the point of a claw. “Does that hurt?”

Hardison drops the hand at Eliot’s throat. He takes two deep breaths, then says, “Yes, ma’am.” She can hear the smile in his voice, making it warm.

“Not like your knuckles, or that scrape on your face.” Parker walks around the two of them, stopping to kiss the crook of Hardison’s arm.

“No. Didn’t much like the guy who did that.”

“But you like me, so it’s different. And you don’t like it when people choke you usually, but you like Hardison, so it’s different.”

Eliot shrugs a little. There’s a tiny smile on his face. Already Parker’s learned to love it. “Yeah.”

“Hardison, distract him some more,” Parker says. She goes for the Ziploc bag of ice. It’s only a little melted. She turns around. Hardison has one hand tangled in Eliot’s hair and one around their cocks. Eliot grips Hardison’s ass, his balls. They have their foreheads pressed together and breathe hard into each other’s mouths. Parker watches for a moment, rubbing circles around her nipple with her thumb. Eliot’s eyes are closed, but Hardison looks back at her, his eyes heavy and warm. A smile passes between them. Parker circles behind Eliot and holds up an ice cube for Hardison to see. He bites his lip and nods a little.

Parker puts the ice cube in her mouth. She can’t feel anything in her mouth. It’s weird. She takes a moment to get used to it, eyes closed, listening to her lovers grunt and drink down each other’s breaths. When she’s ready, she trails cold kisses along Eliot’s welts. He shudders a little, maybe hums into Hardison’s mouth, but nothing more than that. She can push harder. Good. She takes the ice cube from her mouth and drags it down Eliot’s spine, starting at his neck.

“Aahh,” he says, but there’s a bit of a laugh in it, like when she lands on a good hit on him while they’re sparring. “Ah, ah, nnng,” he says, and Parker can just picture Hardison’s mouth cutting off the sound. She rubs the ice all the way down to his tailbone.

“Damn, Parker. What are you doing to him?” Hardison says.

Parker moves around Eliot a little. “This.” She presses the last of the ice cube to Hardison’s nipple.

“Gah!” says Hardison. Eliot holds onto Hardison’s hips to keep him from falling over like last time.

“How did you two manage to avoid grievous bodily harm during sex before you brought me in on it?” Eliot says.

“It was fine,” Parker says, frowning. She would never let Hardison get hurt. Not unless he brought it on himself, of course. Everyone gets to make their own choices.

“I think what Eliot’s getting at is that we might want to be on a bed right now,” Hardison says. “Or a sofa, at least, if we can’t make it that far.”

“It’s a nice sofa, but it ain’t threesome-sized. Let’s go. Hup.” Eliot hooks an arm around one each of Hardison’s and Parker’s. She manages to keep hold of her claws and her ice and she gets pulled along into the bedroom.

Eliot’s bedroom, she learned on Sunday night, is smaller, cleaner, and plainer than Hardison’s. She likes that it’s clean. A dirty house feels like sandpaper on her senses. She hated that about living on the streets. It always felt like it took weeks to wash out the grit from her body and her clothes. On the other hand, Eliot’s bed is kind of cramped for the three of them, especially during sex. He’s either going to have to move in with Hardison or get a bigger bed.

When they all get in the bedroom, Hardison and Eliot turn toward her, their arms still linked, their eyes soft and open. They’re waiting for instructions. Parker smiles. She never knew she had so many warm places inside before she met them. She says, “Same thing as before, just on our sides.”

Eliot and Hardison tangle together on the bed, leaving as much room behind Eliot as they can so Parker can slot in. She takes a moment to stand over them and look at their overlapping legs, at the strand of Eliot’s hair on Hardison’s cheek, at a brown hand on a flushed-pink cock and a pale hand on a purple-dark cock. Suddenly her pants feel too tight. Parker puts the ice and the claws on the nightstand and wriggles out of the rest of her clothes.

She takes an ice cube from the bag, feels the shock of it in her fingertips, then the numbness. She settles behind Eliot on the bed and buries her warm hand in his hair. Her fingers move in small circles on his scalp, using just the edges of her clipped fingernails. She can smell his fancy shampoo. His shoulders roll, and a fading pink line comes near her mouth, so she kisses it, not soft, with teeth. She touches the ice cube to his inner thigh at the same time as she tugs hard at his hair. His muscles jump beneath his skin and he pants out almost-sounds. She rubs the ice up and down his thigh, feels the drips running along the smooth skin there.

Her fingers are getting very cold. Parker puts the ice cube down on the bag and reaches inside the nightstand drawer. She drizzles lotion on her fingers and presses them, still cold, to Eliot’s ass. “Fuck,” says Eliot. She can feel him thrusting into Hardison’s hand. She hooks her fingers in and his wet thighs clamp around her hand. Parker remembers what to do – Eliot showed her and she wouldn’t forget something like that – she reaches inward, upward, _there_ , and Eliot’s breath gets hoarse and ragged. “Cold. Cold,” he says. “Faster, Hardison, come _on_.”

Parker knows she can push Eliot farther, because everything she’s done so far as only made him push harder into Hardison’s hand. She wants to see just how far he can go. So she reaches back toward the nightstand and palms an ice cube. She kisses Eliot’s neck, slow with lots of tongue, then circles the ice cube around his asshole. “Oh, fuck, Hardison,” Eliot whimpers, and that’s _definitely_ a whimper, whatever he might say later. “Fuck, she’s gonna – she’s gonna – “ And she does. She curves her fingers and pushes it right against his prostate.

She’s pressed all up against him, her front along his back, so she feels it all through her body as his muscles clench and shake. His voice is half a scream and he holds onto Hardison like he might float off into the ceiling if he doesn’t. “Shit, Parker, you, wow,” Hardison says. “Come on Eliot, come on babe, I gotcha, I gotcha.”

Parker’s always been good at timing. She takes her moment, bites down on Eliot’s neck and pushes the ice into his prostate again and again, until he’s clenching her fingers so hard it hurts and his voice is almost all scream. Her wrist is getting sore but there’s no way she’ll stop now, not when he’s making noises like that, not when he’s burning all hot and cold inside, scorching her fingers.

Hardison pumps Eliot’s cock in the same furious rhythm. She knows just what Hardison is doing; she can even imagine how he feels, as if Eliot is a live wire, pulsing energy between them until what they feel is all one thing. With her free hand she grabs Eliot’s hair by the roots and pulls his neck into a kiss so hard it makes her own mouth hurt. His scream breaks off, so she can hear the slick sound of Hardison’s hand moving on his cock, and that’s when she knows through their skin to skin to skin connection that he’s coming, hard, shaking all over with it.

She pulls the last of the ice out and kisses Eliot softly at his pulse point, feeling the blood thunder through him. She’s so turned on she can’t even think what to do next. She just _wants_.

“Hey, Parker,” Hardison says softly. “Can you get me a tissue or something?”

That makes Parker’s brain start working again, though she can still feel her clit, hard as a bullet. She reaches for the nightstand drawer. Eliot masturbates, right? He has to have something in there to wipe up with. She finds some moist towelettes in little packets, like they have in airplanes and restaurants sometimes, and leans over to give one to Hardison. Eliot is latching onto random places on Hardison’s neck and chest with his open mouth, like he has to do something with his mouth but isn’t sure what. Hardison watches with a dopey smile on his face. Parker opens a package and gives Hardison a moist towelette.

Hardison raises an eyebrow, looks down at Eliot like he’s thinking of saying something, then just shakes his head and wipes his hand with it. Parker takes it when he’s done and puts it back on the nightstand. Then she grabs Eliot by the jaw, turns his head, and sticks her fingers in his mouth, because if he needs something to suck on then she’ll give it to him. She kisses Hardison, and every time she pulls back to breathe he opens his mouth and says, “Damn girl,” and, “you,” and, “I can’t even believe,” and finally, “you’re real sometimes.”

“I feel like I’m connected to you because we made Eliot have an orgasm together,” says Parker. “It’s like we broke into a vault together, but instead of a vault it was making Eliot happy, and that’s just as good.”

Hardison stares at her. She feels Eliot groan around her fingers and suck harder. “Parker,” says Hardison, “that’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard.”

They kiss again. Parker rubs herself against Hardison’s leg and it’s _such_ a relief that she sighs into his mouth. She feels the suction on her fingers, her lips, and squirms. “I really want to suck you off,” she says.

Hardison smiles wide. “How do you want me?”

“Propped up against the pillows.” Parker remembers her claws. “Ooh! Can I use the claws on you?”

Hardison raises his eyebrows. “How?”

“Oh, not like I did on Eliot. Just to hold you so you won’t move.”

“Okay.” Hardison licks his lips. She’s not sure if that means he’s nervous or turned on or both. But he said okay so she’s going to try it.

She pulls her fingers out of Eliot’s mouth with a soft pop. She grabs his face to kiss him and lets her wet fingers smear spit along his jawline. “Pass me my claws,” she says in his ear, because he’s between her and the nightstand now.

Eliot gives her the claws and looks her up and down. His eyes get stuck between her spread legs, and she realizes she’s been leaking down her thighs for a while now. “Can I take care of that for you?” he says roughly.

“Take care of it how?”

“Can I suck you while you suck him?” Eliot adds, “Ma’am.”

Parker smiles. “Yes.” She kisses Hardison’s mouth, then his neck, then his nipples, once on each hipbone, then she grabs the sides of his ass with her claws and plants her face right on his balls, nipping at them with her lips over her teeth. She wriggles a little to get her ass in the air so Eliot can reach her clit. She can feel Hardison’s groans rumble against her cheek. She also feels hot breath on her damp thighs, and shivers.

“Come on, baby, come on, I need – “ says Hardison, which just makes her want to hold off even longer before she gets to the really good stuff. She tilts him upward using her claws and presses her tongue behind his balls, making it stiff like he does when he tongue-fucks her. “Oh, shit, _Eliot_ ,” says Hardison, looking at a point somewhere behind her head, and then there’s a wide soft tongue licking her from just above her clit all the way down. She turns her head to cry and bite into his inner thigh. Over and over Eliot’s tongue drags along her vulva, waking up every nerve but not giving her nearly enough pressure. She clears her mind enough to make sure her next cry is around a mouthful of Hardison’s cock. He shouts louder than she’s ever heard him during sex, and she feels his hips tremble as he fights not to thrust into her mouth.

She sinks down a little farther on his cock, as far as she can take, until there’s spit running out of her mouth and there’s nothing she can do to stop it. Eliot spreads her apart with his rough-callused hands and starts tongue-fucking her, deep and slow. Tears come to her eyes and she’s not sure if it’s from the strain in her jaw or the rhythm of Eliot’s tongue. She feels herself making high-pitched sounds, humming into the softness of Hardison’s skin, and this time she has to really press in with her claws to keep him still. His muscles are tense as wire and he breathes like he’s running a race.

Parker blinks away the tears, looks up at him, and sees he’s looking past her, at Eliot’s head bobbing between her legs. She can see it all, as if they were connected like security cameras to his laptop: her red, tear-streaked face, the curve of her ass, and behind it, the fall of Eliot’s sweat-damp hair across his neck as he goes down on her.

Eliot sucks hard on her labia, with just a hint of teeth, then licks lazy circles around her clit. She pulls off Hardison’s cock to gasp. Then he starts working her clit with relentless flicks of his tongue and she just gives into it, digging in her claws, curling her toes, sucking wet kisses wherever she can reach on Hardison’s cock because her mouth needs to do _something_ with all the hunger inside her. Her legs start to shake, and Eliot’s hands grab on, holding her up. Parker pants and squirms and latches her mouth onto the underside of Hardison’s cock, swiping her tongue against it in time with Eliot’s.

Parker hears Eliot moaning into her cunt, Hardison babbling words she can’t make out, her own high strained breaths, and smells her spit and Hardison’s sweat. She lets her claws fall from her slack hands, lets her cheek rest in the hollow of Hardison’s hip, lets go of everything. Her thighs clamp around Eliot’s head, and she shudders against his mouth. Everything goes blank except Hardison’s sweat-slick skin against her cheek and Eliot’s wet heat. The sweet, uncoiling shivers go on for what feels like a long time.

Finally, Eliot lets go of her legs, and she falls onto her side, feeling loose and warm. Eliot kisses her hipbone. She cups the side of his face. Her eyes are closed but she can hear Eliot crawl up and kiss Hardison, who says between kisses, “Damn, that was – you – Eliot, babe – “ Parker decides she has to see this, and opens her eyes. Hardison is licking every trace of her from Eliot’s mouth, chasing down the taste. She smiles and squeezes his leg.

He smiles down at her and squeezes her shoulder. “Hey, girl. You up for riding me?”

“I feel like a wet noodle,” Parker says. “Why don’t you fuck me spooning and Eliot fingers you?” She’s trying to get him more comfortable with things up his ass, and she thinks getting it while coming inside her might convince him it’s a good idea. Eliot’s had one finger inside Hardison during a blow job and he seemed to like that. Eliot loves to be fucked, but Parker would also like to watch them the other way around.

“Mmm. Sounds good.” Hardison picks up the meat tenderizers and puts them back on the nightstand. Parker scoots up so she can inspect the marks she left on Hardison’s ass. She can see a warm flush under his dark skin, and when she skates her fingers over the spot, it feels hot. “You got me good. Maybe a little too good. Watch it next time, okay?”

Normally Parker makes sure she doesn’t go too far, but it’s so hard when an orgasm comes on. “I will.” No more holding claws, or anything ouchy, when she’s about to come.

She turns so Hardison’s spooning her. He must have gotten a condom from the nightstand; she can hear him tearing the packet. One of his arms goes under her neck and the other spreads her open for his cock. She presses her face against the soft inside of Hardison’s arm and takes a deep breath as he settles slowly inside her. She lets her breath go, and feels very cozy.

Hardison rocks into her slowly, and she feels warm and thrumming inside, like a taut rope feels when she plucks it. She sighs and hums into his skin. Then Hardison’s breath goes hoarse in her ear, and Parker guesses that Eliot started fingering his ass. “Oh,” he says, and rocks a little faster.

Parker kisses his forearm. “How does it feel?”

“Good,” he gasps. “I - I think - “ But he can’t seem to finish.

“You want more?” Parker says.

“I – I don’t know.”

“Do you trust him?” Parker says, reaching back to squeeze Hardison’s hip. “To stop if you need him to?”

“Yeah,” he says. No hesitation. “Yeah, okay, Eliot, you can – “ For a second he makes no sound at all, which really isn’t normal for him during sex, then he really starts thrusting into Parker. She holds into his hip and moves with him, with Eliot, who she can’t see but feels through Hardison. She rubs her clit and thinks about her cunt and Eliot’s fingers, pinning Hardison between hot points of pleasure. She can feel him struggling, thrusting back onto Eliot, forward into her, groaning like he’s in pain. She’d be worried if she didn’t see how relaxed his arm is under her, his fingers loose with the tips curled up, like he’s waiting to be given something.

Parker squeezes her inner muscles around him, and gives it to him. Every time he pulls out, she clamps down, making him feel it. He makes a desperate sound, high and whining, so different from his smooth deep speaking voice, and he shivers all along her back. She holds still and lets him ride it out.

Hardison pulls out of her slowly and gets up to take care of the condom, though not before grinning at both of them brilliantly like they’ve just pulled off a great con together. Parker turns onto her other side to look at Eliot, who has that post-con smirk on too. The welt on his cheekbone is still there, and his knuckles are still raw. “Turn over,” she says. “I want to see your back.”

Eliot smirks harder and makes sure to wriggle a lot as he turns over. He really knows how to shimmy his ass, but she’s not so distracted that she doesn’t notice the faded pink lines on his back. She touches them with her fingertips. She left marks on him, like those bodyguards did. “I did it,” she says. “So it’s different. Right?”

“When they’re from other people, they’re reminders,” Eliot says. “When they’re from you, they’re trophies.”

Hardison twists around to look at his ass. “Can’t really see mine, but I can feel them. That’ll definitely be interesting when we’re on the job tomorrow. If Nate or Sophie notice, I might just hide in the van.”

Parker grimaces. Eliot says, “They’re too polite. I hope. But they’re sharp. Sophie will see it, at least.”

“Stop talking about them while I’m still feeling sexy,” says Parker. “How many fingers did you get into Hardison?”

“Why do you call him Hardison all the time?”

“You call him Hardison when we’re on a job.”

“If I called him Hardison in bed I’d feel like I was screwing my commanding officer. Or a Bond villain.”

Hardison puts on his British accent and leers at Eliot. “But before I kill you, Mr. Bond, let me show you… my enormous cock.”

Eliot looks at it. “It’s nice, but it ain’t _that_ big.”

Hardison budges up next to Eliot on the bed. “Did you hear that, Parker? He said my dick’s nice. Coming from him, I think that’s like building a monument to my dick and having a parade.”

“On Sunday night, he said it was ‘ _sooo goood_ ,’” Parker says, crooning the words.

Eliot thumps her with a pillow. “I did not say it like that.”

“But you did say it!”

“When do either of you start singing _my_ praises?” Eliot demands.

Hardison kisses him. “You have pretty eyes.”

“And pretty hair,” says Parker.

“Without making me sound like a girl,” Eliot complains.

“Manly biceps,” Hardison says, squeezing his arm.

“Really good at oral sex,” Parker says.

“Sexy growl,” Hardison says.

“That’s more like it.” Eliot stretches, then gets up for what Parker has learned is his routine post-sex shower. _Two fingers_ , he mouths at her as he goes, wiggling his eyebrows. She smiles.

Parker presses her face into the pillow and inhales. She never showers, afterward. Eliot and Hardison have their claw marks for trophies. Smelling like sex is hers. When she wakes up, she’ll still smell like it, and she’ll smile. She closes her eyes. “We’re good, aren’t we?”

“Yeah,” says Hardison. “We’re damn good.”

“We’re good to him.”

“Yes, Parker,” he says warmly. “We’re good to him.”

They have a long day tomorrow. Possibly dangerous. She’ll be in good hands. She pulls the covers over herself and sleeps.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eliot's meat tenderizers look like [this](https://d3dcqeuqjj4q5m.cloudfront.net/promotion_product_image/dc0849fb012d57cce806a6c0d2d036238e74fd8e.jpg). You can get them for less than $15 on the internet. You're welcome.


	4. Tools

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Parker just wants to buy some tools so they can all have better sex. She doesn't get why Hardison and Eliot have to get so embarrassed about it. (Not actually porn, but still pretty sexy.)

“Let’s go shopping for sex toys,” Parker says, popping her head over the back of the sofa. Hardison is writing code on his laptop. Looking at the lines and lines of white on black on his screen always makes her eyes cross.

Hardison looks back at her over his shoulder. “Right now?”

“Eliot said yes and he might take it back if we’re not ready to go by the time he’s done showering.” Parker had to nag him all through his workout to get him to say yes. For such an interesting person he can be so stubborn and boring sometimes.

“Where do you wanna go?”

“I dunno. You look it up. You never want to go anywhere unless people on the internet give it at least four stars.”

Hardison googles “sex toy shop boston” and browses the results. “Looks like the best place is Good Vibrations in Brookline. Or, you know, we could just order online.”

“I want to feel things. Try them for myself. You can’t tell if a sex toy is good just by looking at it online. It’s like good rope. Never trust a climbing rope you haven’t held in your own hands.”

“I’ll keep that in mind for the next time I use climbing rope, which is _never again_.”

“You’ll get better with practice,” Parker says.

She hears the key in the front lock, and the soft beep of the facial recognition scan. Eliot comes in, looking flushed and slightly damp like he always does after hitting the gym. “Hi, Eliot,” Parker says. “Hardison’s coming with us to get sex toys. Which means we get to use his car.”

“Which means _he_ gets to use his car.”

“No one else touches my baby.”

“I thought me and Eliot were your babies,” Parker says. “That’s what you call us when you get all shmoopy.”

Eliot rolls his eyes. “Can we just get this over with?”

“Why is he so grumpy?” Parker asks Hardison. “He likes all the sex toys I’ve used on him.”

“He doesn’t want to like them,” Hardison says. “Come on, let’s get in the car.”

Eliot takes control of the radio, so they listen to twangy music all the way to Brookline. Hardison complains, but Parker kind of likes it. The sex toy shop is tucked away behind a big building like it’s something embarrassing. Parker learned from a young age that she wasn’t allowed to touch herself or talk about sex in front of other people, but she always figured that was because it was personal, not because it was embarrassing. Then again, she seems to be the only person she knows who understands the difference.

There’s a pretty man with long blue hair behind the register who brightens when they come in. “Hello. Can I help you with anything?”

“I want a flogger,” Parker says.

“Uh, we’re just looking,” Hardison says at the same time.

“Why don’t Alice and I get help with the floggers while you look around?” Eliot suggests to Hardison.

Parker frowns. “But what if we pick a flogger and he doesn’t like it?”

“It’ll be fine,” Hardison says, looking sideways at the man behind the register, who’s watching them in the same way Eliot and Hardison watch sports. “Just run it by me before you buy, if you want. I’ll just be… over here.” He walks toward a shelf full of lube.

“What’s up with him?” Parker asks Eliot. “He likes it when I hurt you.”

“Yeah, he’s just embarrassed,” Eliot says. “He’ll be fine.”

“A lot of people are too embarrassed to talk to me at first,” says the man, who isn’t behind the register anymore. “Your partner might come around after some time alone. Why don’t I show you our flogger collection?”

There was a section of wall in the back with floggers hanging from hooks. There were also riding crops, like they had at the stables to use on horses. “The floggers give a thuddy sensation,” says the shop clerk, “while the riding crops give more of a stingy sensation. Do you know which you prefer?”

Parker looks at Eliot. He says, “Thuddy, I think, though I’d give stingy a try.”

“You like horses,” Parker says. “I could beat you like one.”

Eliot meets her eyes. “If you like, ma’am.” Parker feels herself heat. Oh, he knows exactly what he’s doing. Why is Eliot so good at this, when she has no idea how to do it to him or Hardison? It isn’t fair.

“Should I try them both out on you? See what you like?”

“Feel free,” says the shop clerk. “You can try out any of our impact toys.”

Eliot shrugs, and there’s an expression on his face she can’t read, a little pink in the cheeks, a little upturned around the eyes, a little flat around the mouth. “We don’t have to. We can just get both.”

“True,” says Parker. “We do have a lot of money.” She decides to go along with what he said and try them out on him later instead of now. Still, some part of her brain she doesn’t quite trust thinks he really wouldn’t have minded if she had, even in front of the shop clerk.

She touches the floggers. They’re all black, which she likes, and they come in different sizes. She takes the biggest one. Eliot is a big guy, and if she wants to go gentle, she can just hit lighter. The riding crops come in all kinds of colors and sizes, even a pink one with glitter on the end, but she takes the one that says on the label that it’s equestrian, made for hitting actual horses. Eliot’s face relaxes. She imagines what his face would have looked like if she’d taken the pink glittery one, and smiles.

“Anything else you need help with?” asks the shop clerk.

“I think we’ll go find our partner, see how he’s doing,” says Eliot, and for some reason Parker really likes hearing Eliot call Hardison that. _Our partner_. She wonders how to make him say it again.

They find Hardison in front of a display of harnesses, kind of like the ones she uses, though she’d never trust any of them to hold her weight. When he sees them, he says, “Find what you were looking for?”

Parker shows him the flogger and the riding crop. Hardison laughs. “You really do want revenge on him for the horses, don’t you.”

“It’s not about revenge,” says Parker. “If Eliot likes horses so much, he can _be_ one. I’ll ride him. It’ll be therapeutic. At Second Act they told me I have to face my fears.”

Hardison grins, and Eliot gets that strange look on his face again. Parker leans in and asks Hardison, “What does Eliot’s face mean?”

“It means he’s more turned on than he’s supposed to be in public.”

“Shut up, Hardison,” Eliot grumbles, which means it’s true.

“Did you find anything you like?” asks Parker.

Hardison shows her a butt plug and a cock ring. Both of them can vibrate. Parker says, “You have really good ideas sometimes.”

Eliot eyes them. “What do we need those for?”

“We don’t _need_ any of this stuff,” Hardison says, waving around at the store. “Except the condoms. It’s just fun. And it’ll keep Parker from trying to use everything in your kitchen as a sex toy.”

“When you put it that way…”

Parker doesn’t think this is fair. “You liked the rolling pin.”

“You used it to give me a massage!” says Hardison. “Of course I liked it. They have massage oils here, you know.”

Eliot’s eyes sharpen. He’s interested. If he knows how to give massages and he’s been holding out on them, Parker is going to steal the magazines he hides under his bed.

“What do you think of this one?” Hardison asks, pointing at one of the completely impractical harnesses in red leather.

“What’s it for?”

Hardison stares at her, then smiles slowly. “It’s a strap-on harness. This ring is where you put a dildo.”

Parker pictures herself wearing it. Red leather straps, her blue ridgy dildo coming up out of it, its base pressing against her clit. The image is very clear and bright. “I could fuck you with it.”

Eliot has that face on again. Parker looks down, and yes, Hardison is right, he is _so_ turned on in public. Maybe she can do to Eliot what he does to her – if only she knew how to do it on purpose. Sometimes she feels like everybody has superpowers except her.

“Thought you’d like it,” Hardison says, looking between them.

Parker pulls on the leather straps, testing. “Not sturdy enough. This’ll break, the way I want to use it.”

Hardison raises his eyebrows. “How exactly do you want to use it?”

“Hard. And often.”

Parker looks at Eliot. Huh. He usually doesn’t get this pink until they’ve been kissing him for at least five minutes. She smiles. “Leather has a great smell, but this black nylon one will hold up better.” She gets one still in the packaging.

“I’m gonna go… look at stuff,” Eliot mumbles, and wanders off.

Hardison whispers in Parker’s ear, “That boy’s gonna come in his pants as soon as he sees you wearing this thing.”

“He better not. I want him to come _while_ I’m fucking him.”

“We’ll see. Come on, they have like twenty kinds of condoms here. I wanna get some of the ribbed ones.”

They get some condoms, flavored dental dams, and warming lube. Well, Parker shoplifts that last one, because you can’t stay good without practice. When they meet back up with Eliot at the register, he has massage oil. Parker narrows her eyes at him. He can kiss his secret copies of _Bon Appétit_ and _GQ_ goodbye.

Parker pays for the sex toys. One of the best things about having lots of money is that she can spend it on anything she wants. When the man behind the counter gives her a receipt, he says, “Can I just say that the three of you are _so_ cute together?”

Parker blinks. This man is the first person to ever see their relationship for what it is. Well, Nate and Sophie might see it, but this is the first person to see it and say something about it. Parker doesn’t care what strangers think about their relationship, but she likes the idea that the way they feel about each other is enough that other people can see it with their face-reading superpowers.

Then she thinks about what the man actually said. Hardison is cute. Eliot is cute too, sometimes. Parker doesn’t think she’s cute, though Hardison sometimes says she is. Maybe that’s what “cute together” means. Parker is spending so much time together with Hardison and Eliot that their cuteness has spread to her somehow. She likes that. “Yes,” she says, then, “Thanks for telling me.”

Eliot and Hardison stare at her all the way out to the car. “What?” Parker says.

They look at each other. “You were polite,” says Hardison. “Just now. In the store. You never do that when you’re not on a con.”

“People in shops usually say stupid things. ‘Have a nice day’? You can’t just tell someone to have a nice day. Mostly I just wish they didn’t talk at all. But that guy actually told me something I wanted to know. So I said thanks.”

“I could’ve told you we were cute together,” Hardison says, sliding into the driver’s seat.

“But you didn’t,” Parker points out.

“We kick ass,” Eliot says, leaning back the passenger seat. “That guy didn’t even know the half of it.”

Parker watches Eliot. She wants to do that thing he does where he turns her on with just the right words. “So,” she says. “Which toy do you want to try out first? Want me to put the cock ring on Hardison? Or should I fuck you with the harness? Or both!”

Eliot groans and tilts against the headrest. Parker grins. This car ride is going to fly right by.


	5. Edge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eliot with a knife is scary. Eliot with a knife is also sexy. Parker needs to find out why.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As usual, beyonces_fiancee is my hero. If anyone sees my internet history, let it be known that I researched knives for porn, not murder.

Eliot cut up two men for her and Hardison. The men had knives at Parker’s and Hardison’s throats, and Eliot cut them before they could cut her and Hardison. He had a look on his face like there was fire behind his eyes, but down a long tunnel, and everything else was nothingness. He moved so fast she couldn’t follow it. First she felt the pressure of the knife lift, then she ducked out of the way of the fight, then hot liquid sprayed on her shirt and hands. When it was over, Eliot’s pale skin and white shirt were sliced with red, and his hands were rock-steady as he checked her and Hardison, to make sure they were okay, he said. It took a long time to wash the blood off.

Parker didn’t dream about it that night – she was too tired to dream – but the next night, she did. In her dream, Eliot was drenched in white-hot sunlight, gleaming bright off his clean knife. He held it like Parker used her ropes. It was part of his arm. It moved with him as he came closer. There were no men threatening to kill her or Hardison. Just the three of them. There was something both sexy and scary about Eliot coming right up to her and Hardison with the knife in his hand. It all made her sweat, the sun and the arousal and the fear. When she woke up, her hair stuck damp to the back of her neck.

Parker thinks about the dream. She understands why Eliot was sexy in the dream. Eliot is so good with knives he makes it into art. It turns her on to see Eliot and Hardison do things they’re really good at. Even when all he’s doing is sitting at his computer typing, Hardison can be really sexy, because he’s hacking into the world’s best security and he’s so alive with something no one else has. That’s Eliot with a knife. It’s sexy. What she doesn’t understand is why Eliot was so scary in the dream. Eliot would never hurt her or Hardison. She knows that. There’s no reason for her to have a scary dream about him holding a knife.

The next day, Parker watches Eliot cook. He uses a knife, of course. He cuts up three onions way faster than Parker could, chop chop chop chop done. It’s sexy. It’s not scary. She knows that. She’s watched him cook before. Nothing’s changed.

She also watches him at the gym. He punches a bag, swipes at imaginary enemies, even grapples with her, and it’s still just sexy, not scary. She ends up pinned to the mat with Eliot straddling her – that was a really good takedown he just used. Eliot holds her wrists over her head and says, “Parker, why have you been staring at me all day? It’s getting creepy.”

“I want you to use a knife on me,” Parker says. “In a sexy way.”

Eliot’s eyebrows lower a little. “Is this because of those guys who tried to hurt you and Hardison?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know. Will you do it?”

Eliot lets go of her wrists and leans back. “I need you to be more specific.”

Parker thinks about it. “I don’t want you to hurt me or draw blood or anything. Just… try to be scary.”

“You like being in control.”

“You’re using the knife, and I’m telling you how to use it. So I _am_ in control.”

“Huh,” says Eliot. “Okay. I’ll do it. But Alec has to be there, and if you say no or stop, then I stop. None of that safeword stuff.”

“Okay,” says Parker. “Can you get off me now?”

A few hours later, she gets a text from Hardison. _Eliot told me about the thing you want to do with the knives. Why?_

 _Not knives. I was thinking just one knife. I want to do it because it’s sexy when you and Eliot do things you’re good at._ This is true, but it’s not all of the truth. Hardison would probably see that if he were here, but his mind-reading superpowers only really work when he can see her face.

_So. Want to go down on me while I write this backdoor for getting past Tor proxies?_

_Write a backdoor to get me free porn and then we’ll see_ , Parker texts back. A few hours later, she opens her email and finds links to get her into ten different porn websites. She opens a link for one of the kinky ones and settles in for a fun evening of watching pretty boys and girls getting whipped.

Then there’s a new job, so they don’t get around to playing with knives until the next week. They’re all working quietly together after the job at Eliot’s apartment. Parker is checking her climbing gear, Hardison has his laptop half in pieces and is doing _something_ to it, and Eliot is sharpening his knives.

He has a whetstone and his second-favorite chef’s knife out. His fingers gleam with the oil he used to lubricate the whetstone. He holds the knife at a precise angle, using two fingers on the flat of the blade to guide it as he drags it across the stone. The scraping sound is harsh on Parker’s ears, but she likes to watch, especially when he gently moves his fingertips along the blade’s edge to test it.

Eliot’s eyes stay fixed on his work the whole way, until he’s just finishing up with the finer grit side of the whetstone and looks up, his eyes meeting Parker’s. His eyelids open up more and his stare gets deeper. The side of his mouth tilts up and his face shines so much it’s hard to look at. He says, “You like that?”

“Yeah,” says Parker. She uses more breath to say it than she really needs, and the extra spills over, adding all this _hhhh_ sound into it.

Hardison puts down his tiny screwdriver and looks from Parker to Eliot and back. “Ohh,” he says. “ _Now_ I get why we’re doing this.”

Good. If Hardison thinks this is a good idea, then it has to be fine. Parker takes off her shirt. “I’m ready.”

Hardison takes a deep breath in. He always does that when she takes her shirt off and doesn’t have a bra on under it, even though he must have seen her do it a hundred times already. It’s funny.

“Whoa, Parker,” says Eliot. “Slow down. I ain’t using this knife on you.”

“Why not?”

“I’m going to do everything I can to make sure I don’t cut you, like we said. But I can’t be 100% sure I won’t draw blood, and I’m not getting any human blood on a knife I use in the kitchen.”

“Man’s got a point,” says Hardison.

“Okay, fine. Get a different knife.” He better hurry. The whetstone is shiny with oil and Eliot’s fingers are shiny from the whetstone and something warm and heavy is settling between Parker’s hips.

“Go to my room,” says Eliot. “I don’t want you hovering over my shoulder while I set up. Alec, why don’t you go with her and warm her up for this?”

“Warm her up, huh?” Hardison smiles at Eliot.

Eliot gets up on his knees and leans over Hardison’s spread-out pieces of laptop to kiss him. “I’m sure you’ll think of something.”

Hardison carefully steps over all the stuff they have on the floor, takes Parker’s hands, and pulls her up. He kisses her all the way to Eliot’s bedroom, and she doesn’t get to sneak a look at what Eliot’s doing, which was probably the point. Parker shouldn’t fall for classic misdirections like this, but it’s hard not to when Hardison is half-tickling half-teasing her earlobe with his tongue and she wants to laugh and squirm and gasp at the same time. All she gets out is a wriggle and a choked-off sound.

Hands on her waist, the nip of teeth on her ear, thigh between her legs, and for a few minutes all she can feel is the heavy weight of her clit as she grinds against Hardison, letting him kiss her and hold her up. Then everything goes shivery-still when she hears a switchblade go _snick_ behind her.

But it’s okay, because it’s Eliot holding the blade. All along her front, she feels Hardison breathe in deep. What does he see over her shoulder? Is Eliot naked? She hopes he is.

There’s another press of a hand on the back of her neck, then a hard burning line under her ribcage. Parker gasps and tries to look down, but Eliot’s grip on her neck keeps her looking straight ahead at Hardison. She just has to guess. The switchblade is right under her ribcage, where he could stab straight up and pierce her heart. She breathes shallow, as if the knife might break skin if she takes in too much air.

“Why is it hot?” says Parker. Her voice is high and squeaky, like the boys and girls getting whipped on the kinky porn site.

“‘Cause Eliot is hot when he acts all dangerous,” says Hardison.

“I know why Eliot is hot,” says Parker. “I want to know why the knife is hot.”

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Eliot says in her ear. “Figure it out.”

He takes the knife away, lets go of her, and steps back. She feels cold where his hands and the knife were. The pressure of his hand returns, this time to the back of her head, holding it steady, and then the hot blade is on her cheek, like a hard steel tongue. Sweat gathers on her hairline and starts trickling down. Eliot kisses her ear, on the same side of her face as the knife, and says, “Don’t move.” Another kiss to her ear. “You don’t have to just stand there, Hardison.”

Hardison’s face comes back into focus. He blinks, like he wasn’t really seeing straight either. “Oh. Yeah.” He kisses Parker’s collarbone, his chin resting on top of her breast. It would be so comfortable, like he could just stay there lapping at her collarbone all day, if it weren’t for the knife on Parker’s cheek keeping her taut and still. She knows she wouldn’t get cut even if she moved, because Eliot wouldn’t let it happen, but her body still won’t move more than a twitch, even when the two hot mouths on her feel so _good._

Eliot steps back, and Parker falls forward against Hardison, every muscle in her body relaxing at once. Hardison squeezes her into a tight hug and says, “Are you good? Or do you want more?”

Parker takes a few deep breaths, as much as Hardison’s grip lets her. What Eliot did was sexy. Her underwear is damp and her nipples are hard. But having the knife on her was like jumping down from a ceiling hatch into a laser grid: exciting, thrilling, an adrenaline rush. She still doesn’t understand why Eliot with a knife could ever make her afraid. “More,” she says. “But this time, I want to face Eliot. I want to watch.”

“All right,” says Eliot. Parker turns around. All of his clothes are on, and the switchblade is folded back up in his hand. “But then I get to watch you. Both of you get naked.”

“What about you?” says Parker, stripping out of her jeans.

“If I get naked, I’m gonna get too distracted to do this right. Later, okay? I promise.”

Hardison puts his hands on her shoulders. She can feel the heat from his naked body like a glow against her back. “Where do you want us?”

“Just the way you are.” _Snick._ Eliot flicks out the blade again, and reaches for something on a chair behind him. A bowl of ice water. He must have hot water there too. Sneaky. He dips the knife in the ice water. The ice cubes crackle and pop as the blade sheds its heat. He holds a finger to the flat of the knife, and when he’s satisfied with the temperature, he takes it out of the water and wipes it mostly dry with his fingertips. “Stand right up against her, Hardison. She might have to lean on you for this.”

Eliot stalks toward Parker, his eyes dark and relaxed around the edges, the knife balanced in his hand as if he were holding a quarter on it edge-on. If she were an enemy, he wouldn’t think so much about how he was holding it. He would just have it, like it was part of his arm. But now, the knife is separate. He’s aware of it, like Parker is. Like Hardison is. His cock thickens against her ass. Then the knife is a blazing cold bar against Parker’s throat, and the ice-cool fingers of Eliot’s free hand are in her mouth.

Parker sucks. She breathes through her nose and feels the skin of her throat shift slightly against the knife with each inhale. She feels closed in, like she’s waiting in an air vent for the right moment to drop, the warm walls of Hardison and Eliot’s bodies at her back and front, the cold steel trap of the knife at her neck. Eliot’s eyes are huge, right in front of hers, his irises shifting as he watches every part of her face. She closes her eyes before she gets lost.

Eliot pulls his fingers free of her mouth, then cups her vulva, hard. Parker gasps. With the knife at her throat, she can feel the rush of air into her head as she drags it in. She’s never been so focused on her neck before. It feels like there’s a spotlight on it, like it could glow in the dark, the way her feet do in her mind when she walks along a rope. She feels every little hitch of breath as Eliot rolls his fingertips against her clit. She doesn’t want to shake, but she’s doing it anyway, like a taut rope under pressure, her arms and legs trembling against Hardison’s.

“Sorry, guys, I’mma have to tap out,” says Hardison. His voice is light and slow, and he’s completely soft. “You can keep on going if you want, but I’m gonna have to be in the other room.”

Eliot takes the knife away from her throat and his hand out from between her legs. With a few fast movements of his hands, he has the switchblade locked away. “Only with you there. You’re our spotter. That’s the deal I made with Parker. Let’s do something else.”

Parker feels the tension drain out of her body again, and she sags back against Hardison. “Can we all be naked on the bed now?”

“‘Course, babe.” She and Hardison lie down and watch Eliot undress. He raises his eyebrows at them and makes sure to do it extra slow. Parker giggles and watches him roll off his plain white tube sock as if it were a fishnet stocking. When he joins them on the bed, it’s cramped as always, their arms and legs overlapping, but Parker doesn’t mind.

“So what was that about?” Hardison says. “Don’t tell me it was just about sex. I know better than that.”

“I’m never scared of Eliot holding a knife,” Parker says. “But one time I was. I wanted to figure out why. And I thought it would be sexy.”

“I thought it might be about that time with all the knives,” Hardison says. “That’s why I had to tap out. When we’re having sex, I want it to be about us. Not about what some jumped-up thugs with knives almost did.”

Eliot says nothing. He uncurls his body and lies straight, so he’s not facing her and Hardison, just staring up at the ceiling.

“It didn’t help,” says Parker. “I thought I’d start out scared, and then it would go away. But I wasn’t scared, that whole time just now. So I still don’t know why I was scared that one time. It doesn’t make sense.”

“Come on, Parker,” Hardison says, curling up around her. “You were shaking like a leaf just now. You were scared. But Eliot knew what he was doing, so it was the good kind of fear. Like when you break into a super locked-down facility and you don’t know if you’re gonna get caught. You know what you’re doing, so it’s the good fear, right?”

Parker wants to say that breaking into really good, fancy security systems doesn’t scare her. It’s what everyone thinks. She likes when people think she’s never afraid. But there’s no point lying to Hardison. “Right.”

“That time was different,” Hardison says. “That was the bad kind of fear. We almost died, Parker.” His voice breaks up a little. “Eliot went all Terminator. I never saw him like that before.”

“It’s all about control,” Eliot says, still staring up at the ceiling. “When I fight. It’s about knowing exactly how far I can go. Hardison’s right. That time, I had no idea how far I was gonna go. I was out of control. You had good reason to be scared, Parker. I can’t let that happen again.”

“Is that why you hurt them so bad?” says Parker. “You usually don’t hurt people that much.”

Eliot turns his head toward the wall. “Yeah.”

“I think I understand now,” says Parker. “Sophie says it’s normal to act stupid around people you love. You’re a lot less stupid than most people, so when you do it, it doesn’t show as much. And I’m okay being scared of you if it means you’re saving my life and hurting people who tried to kill me.”

“You shouldn’t have to be scared of me at all.”

“Man, you shouldn’t have to be scared of _yourself_ ,” says Hardison. “Neither of us are even _remotely_ as worried you’ll lose it as you are, Eliot.”

They all go quiet for a minute. Then Eliot rolls over to face them, finally. “That’s why I think I’d rather just be a sub with you from now on. No more asking me to use knives or anything else like that. When you’re in charge, I don’t have to worry I’m gonna lose it.” His voice goes hard, like he’s giving out a challenge. “It’s the only time I don’t worry, okay?”

“Okay,” says Hardison, reaching over Parker to squeeze Eliot’s arm.

“You’re wrong,” says Parker. “You would never hurt me. It’s stupid for you to worry. But Sophie’s right, so I’m going to let you be stupid. But only about this, okay?”

Eliot nods.

“And anyway, that was fun, but I like it better when I’m in control.” Parker smiles. She feels so much better now that she knows she’s not going to be scared of Eliot anymore. “I’m going to make out with Hardison now. You just sit there and watch. And don’t touch yourself. Even if I’m not watching, I’ll know.” She climbs on top of Hardison, her chest squished up against his, and crushes their mouths together. It feels so good she has to pull away for a moment and laugh against his cheek.

Parker holds down Hardison’s arms and kisses him sloppily and he spreads his legs for her so they each have a thigh between the others’. She sucks a kiss so hard on his neck it would bruise if his skin weren’t so dark. She feels precome on her inner thigh. She can hear it slide and slick when she moves it along his cock. Hardison’s arms strain beneath her hands as he arches up into the touch.

Beside them, Eliot makes a soft, eager sound. His cock is flushed red and so are his lips. He must have bitten them while he watched. Parker says, “You want something, Eliot?”

Eliot looks back and forth between them, his lashes down over his eyes. Then he says, “I want to fuck Hardison.”

Parker looks at Hardison. He’s taken both her and Eliot’s tongues and fingers, but he’s never really gotten fucked. “Do you wanna?”

Hardison bites his lip. “Your blue dildo’s smaller than Eliot, right?”

Parker nods. She’s a good judge of diameter. It’s important for knowing which vents she can crawl through.

“You got it with you?”

“Duh. I wouldn’t come over to Eliot’s apartment without my dildos.”

“When did this become our lives?” Hardison asks Eliot.

“Since we started dating Parker. It’s what my mama would have called a questionable lifestyle choice.”

Parker skips off to get her duffel bag. When she comes back, Eliot and Hardison are kissing. She can hear the wet sucking sounds as their mouths move slowly against each other. They can kiss for a long time without getting impatient. One time, Parker woke up early one morning and heard them kissing. She lay there for half an hour pretending to be asleep while they kissed and kissed. It’s so romantic when they do that. Parker isn’t good at being romantic. But she is good at sex.

“I don’t think you’ve seen this one, Eliot,” Parker says, throwing herself on the bed with the ridgy, swirly blue dildo in her hands. Thump. The mattress bounces, and the boys stop kissing so they can look.

“Looks like something that Doctor Who would have down his pants,” Eliot says.

“He’s called _the Doctor_ ,” Hardison says. “Doctor Who is the name of the show.”

“Are you going to fuck Hardison with it or not?”

Eliot holds a hand out toward the dildo and curls his fingers in and out, like he’s reeling it in by an invisible line. Parker passes it over. He runs his fingers along the ridges and bumps, then looks up at her. “You like these?”

“Yeah. They kind of catch inside you. Like the ridge at the head of a cock, but all over.”

“Huh.” Eliot pulls on Hardison’s thigh, then climbs over to kneel between his spread legs. He wiggles the fingers of his free hand at Parker without looking away from Hardison. She gets a condom and lube out from the nightstand and gives them to Eliot. He rolls the condom on the dildo, muting its nice blue color, and lubes it up. He rubs the slick head of the dildo between Hardison’s asscheeks and leans forward to lick a stripe up his cock. Hardison groans and jerks his hips forward.

Parker wants in. She kneels next to Hardison and bends down to play with his nipples, sucking on one and twisting the other. Hardison arches his back to press his nipple harder into her mouth. She smiles and uses her teeth, just a little.

Hardison’s chest muscles go tight under Parker’s mouth. “Oh, _shit_ ,” he breathes. She sits up to see what Eliot’s doing. He has Hardison’s cock halfway down his throat and the head of the dildo inside him. He rocks it slowly inward in time with the up-and-down rhythm of his mouth. Parker rests her chin on Hardison’s thigh so she can watch the dildo slowly disappear into him, while he hisses curse words she can’t even understand anymore.

“Pretty good, isn’t it?” she says.

“Shit, Parker,” Hardison gasps. “I can feel every – single – goddamn – bump on this thing. It’s – ” Eliot tilts his wrist upward, and Hardison jerks both his legs up so hard he almost knocks Parker’s jaw. “ _Ohhh._ ”

Eliot looks sideways at Parker and grins around his mouthful of cock. She smiles back. Hardison’s done such a good job fucking both of them. It feels good to do it back. He deserves it. He’s _Hardison._

Hardison is panting, his head tilted back. Parker wants to feel his breath on her skin. She crawls up the bed. “Can I sit on you?”

He nods twice, hard enough to lift his head off the pillow. Parker sits on his face and leans forward so she can watch Eliot. Hardison moans into her clit with every thrust of the dildo, steady and sharp in Eliot’s hand. Parker reaches out and grabs Eliot’s hair, forcing him down harder on Hardison’s cock. A few strands of hair slip from her grip and stick to his pink, sweating face. Hardison’s whole body rocks with the dildo as Eliot fucks it into him, even his head between Parker’s legs. It’s almost like Eliot is fucking her too.

Parker moves her hand from Eliot’s hair to his cheek so she can feel Hardison’s cock change the shape of his mouth, faster and faster, until Hardison half-screams into Parker, and she feels the vibrations all along her folds and inner thighs as he comes down Eliot’s throat. Eliot looks at Parker through the curtain of his hair as he swallows. His stare feels hot on her face, as if he were holding the knife there again. Parker crawls forward and they kiss, Hardison still breathing heavy underneath them. Eliot’s mouth is slick and swollen from cocksucking, open and messy to her tongue.

“Hey. Guys?” Hardison says. “Can I get this dildo out of me, please?”

Parker stops kissing Eliot and giggles. The corner of his mouth turns up. He pulls the dildo out slowly, getting one last groan out of Hardison. Eliot pats his leg. “You’re a champ, Hardison.”

“Smartass,” Hardison grumbles.

“Do you like my blue dildo?” Parker says, peeling the condom off it and waving it around.

“I think I want to try something smooth next time. Those ridges are _torture_ , man.”

Eliot grabs the base of his cock and wiggles his eyebrows. “I got something smooth for you.”

Hardison claps his hand to his forehead. “I walked right into that, didn’t I.”

“You’ll like it,” Parker says. “The curve in it feels really nice. Come here, Eliot.” She puts the dildo on the nightstand, takes out another condom, and tosses it to Eliot. He catches it one-handed, and gets it out of the packet and on his cock in two quick moves. Efficient. Parker appreciates that. She pulls Eliot on top of her, tilts her hips up, guides him in. He feels so warm. Dildos are great, but they don’t fill her with this silky heat.

Eliot presses his thumb into her clit. “You wanna come?”

Parker brushes his hand away. “Let me do that. Touch my breasts. You, too, Hardison.”

Eliot fucks her deep and slow and doesn’t break his rhythm even once – just the way Parker likes it. He grabs her breast and rolls her nipple between his fingers. Hardison rolls over and kisses her other nipple with lots of tongue, looking up at her the whole time. His eyes are wide and dark and totally focused on her. Eliot watches him through his long lashes, then watches Parker instead. Half his hair is stuck to his face and neck, his chest heaves, and his eyes are so _full._ Not at all like when he cut up those men for her and Hardison, his face an empty mask.

Two sets of eyes shine on Parker like spotlights. Her skin is tight and tingly all over. She can’t come like this. The way they look at her is too much to filter out, keeping her here in this bright room with their bright faces instead of that fuzzy place in her body where orgasms happen. But she’d rather let them keep looking at her just like this, so she gives up on coming this time, and strokes herself in easy circles around her clit. It feels like there’s a triangle in the air between her face and theirs, an empty space full of light. She lets it hang there for as long as she can.

Eliot’s breath starts coming heavier. His thighs shake against hers, just a little. She might be okay with not having an orgasm, but that doesn’t mean Eliot is. She wraps her legs around his waist to make him pause. “You can come now, Eliot. How do you want me?”

“You mind going on your front?”

Parker didn’t like doggy-style last time she tried it, but that guy wasn’t Eliot. And back then she didn’t have a Hardison to make out with while she got fucked. She rolls over and pulls Hardison in for a sideways, squashed-against-the-pillow kiss. Eliot’s hands grip her hips, firm but gentle, like the touch of his knife beneath her ribs. Then he’s back in, _in, in_ , and all Parker can do is moan open-mouthed against Hardison’s face while he holds the back of her neck and presses kisses along her jaw.

In, in, in. The bed shakes. Eliot’s chanting something over and over. It doesn’t make it through the fog in Parker’s head, at first. Then she hears it. “Yours, yours, Parker, yours, Alec, I’m _yours_.”

“Yeah, Eliot,” Hardison says, his cheek pressed against Parker’s. “Ours.”

Thump, thump, _thump_. A long, dark sound between a sigh and a growl. Eliot holds on tight to Parker and goes still. Parker and Hardison grin at each other, right at the same time, and kiss. Eliot rests inside her a minute, then pulls out slowly. “Hmmm,” Parker says, rolling over so she can press her whole front against Hardison while they kiss.

Once Eliot’s done with the condom, he crawls up between Parker and Hardison. “Hey. When do I get my kiss?”

“Sure you don’t want to shower first?” Hardison says, smiling.

“Screw you, Hardison. You try having hair this long and then we’ll talk.”

“Maybe next time. And yeah, I did try it, in high school, and this brother just ain’t meant to have a ‘fro. My Nana said it looked like a monster trying to eat my head.”

Eliot grabs Hardison’s face and kisses him hard. Parker sits up to watch. Their legs tangle together, Eliot’s hooked behind Hardison’s knee. Hardison’s hands rest on Eliot’s ass, just holding, not grabbing.

Parker reaches out and rubs Hardison’s head, feeling the rough stubbly hair. “What about one of those flat-tops? That would look cute on you.”

Hardison glares up at her and doesn’t stop kissing Eliot.

“It’s okay,” says Parker. “You’re cute anyway.” She rubs Hardison’s head one more time, then runs her fingers through Eliot’s tangled, sweaty hair. “I know you don’t want to do the knives again, but thanks for trying. I liked it, even though it didn’t do what I thought it would do.”

Eliot flashes up a smile at her, then tells Hardison, still holding his face: “Thanks for watching out for us while we did that. I know that was intense for you.”

“I don’t mind intense,” Hardison says. “I’m just not hot on dealing with feelings through sex without talking about them first. Believe it or not, words are better at communicating things than sex is.”

“Words are hard,” Parker says.

“So’s sex, sometimes,” Hardison says.

Hardison is right. She liked what Eliot did with the knives, but it wasn’t _easy_. Their first time together wasn’t, either. “Okay,” says Parker. “New rule: try words first.”

“Hardison’s gonna be way better at this rule than either of us.”

“You’ll just have to learn from the master.”

“And then maybe you can learn about when to shut up.”

“You _like_ it when I talk, Eliot. I know all your secrets now. Can’t hide nothing from your boyfriend.”

“Boyfriend? I ain’t been anybody’s boyfriend since high school.”

“Boytoy?” Parker puts in. Eliot turns around and thumps her with a pillow, just like she knew he would. She ducks and plants a loud kiss on his mouth. “What about partner? That’s what you called him in front of the salesperson at the sex toy shop.”

“Partners in crime, baby,” Hardison says, grinning.

“Go take your after-sex shower, Eliot,” Parker says. “You’ll be less grumpy. I’m going to finish checking over my climbing rope. Ooh! I should use rope on you sometime.”

“Bondage,” Hardison says, staring up at the ceiling, his eyes kind of glazed over. “Parker bondage.”

“Well, now I know what to jerk off to ’til next time,” Eliot mutters. He kisses Parker on the cheek and stumbles for the bathroom.

“You go,” Hardison says, waving at Parker. “I can’t get up. If Nate and Sophie notice me walking funny, I blame both of y’all.”

“Poor Hardison,” Parker says. “Sex is so _hard_.”

“Go check your ropes. I’m great at sex and you know it.”

Parker does. He listens, and asks, and gives and gives. If sex is about understanding what people’s bodies need and giving it to them, then Hardison is probably the best at it of all of them. But she’s not going to tell him that. Getting to sleep with two hot people who love him has already done enough for his ego. She cups his cheek in her hand, then gets back to work.


	6. Hitch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Eliot is tied up, and both Parker and Hardison get to take a ride.

“Whatcha got in that bag?” Hardison asks her.

“Oh, you know. Stuff,” Parker says, because she wants to figure out how Hardison knows she has something special in her bag. It’s not a superpower she’s ever going to have, but she wants to understand it.

“Aw, come on Parker, you can’t fool me. You got that look in your eye.”

“What look?”

“That look like you’re planning to break into something well-defended,” Eliot says, his head popping up from Hardison’s lap to look at her over the arm of the sofa.

“But we don’t have a job planned, so it’s got something to do with us,” Hardison finishes.

Parker sits on the table in front of the sofa, the duffel bag resting in the cross of her legs. There’s music playing, somewhere, the kind of slow beat and low, soulful voice Eliot likes. Hardison’s sitting on the sofa and Eliot’s stretched out with his head in Hardison’s lap. It’s the kind of thing Parker can never relax enough to do unless she’s just had sex, and even for Eliot it isn’t easy, but she can see in the soft corners of his mouth how much he enjoys it.

She opens the duffel bag and wraps a coil of black nylon rope around her wrist. “I’ve only ever used this for climbing buildings. But I want to use it on you.”

“What did you have in mind?” Hardison says. His hand strokes slowly through Eliot’s hair, spread out across his thighs like a halo.

Parker pulls out more rope, taking the loose end and tying a braid of slipknots in it. “Rope makes me feel safe. When I tie a harness on myself, I know I can’t fall. And it’s even more like that when I tie it on you. You can’t climb like I can, so if I tie your harnesses I feel like…” She looks down at her rope, because now that she’s saying this out loud, it sounds kind of silly, because Hardison _hates_ climbing, even when Parker tied all the ropes herself. “Like I’m protecting you.”

Eliot watches her fingers as they move through the rope, making slipknot after slipknot. “I’m in. Just make sure you got safety scissors on hand. In case.”

Parker sits up straighter. “I always bring safety scissors with my rope!” She’s never forgotten, ever since that time the building she was about to rob caught on fire during the job. She’d needed every second she could to get away, and the scissors were the fastest way to get all the ropes off.

Hardison holds onto Eliot’s bicep. “You got me too, girl. Just take it slow with me, all right?”

Parker smiles and holds the rope up to her face, so she can feel the slick nylon fibers against the sensitive skin. “If I tie Eliot down, will you take him for me? Ride him until you come? I want to watch you.”

Eliot licks his lips and looks up at Hardison from his lap. Hardison cups his hand under Eliot’s chin and smiles softly at Parker. “Yeah, baby. I’ll take him for you.”

Parker can’t hold back a little hiccup of delight. Eliot’s shifting his hips a little from side to side – he’s turned on _already_ , this is just too good. She imagines the sweat on Hardison’s face as he takes Eliot inside him, Eliot’s gasps, the way the knots will feel in her hands when she grabs them, and suddenly it’s all so much inside her head she has no idea how to make any of it happen in real life.

“Let’s get you ready for Parker, babe,” says Hardison, pushing Eliot up off his lap. “I’mma take off these clothes for you real slow. Come on.” He looms over Eliot and pulls him toward the bedroom, and Eliot lets himself be led, though both of them steal looks at her over their shoulders.

Parker takes a moment to run the rope against her lips, feeling its texture, tasting it a little. It reminds her of being on a job. It clears her head. Sexy things are happening, but not in this room, and that lets her find herself again. Then she really wants to _see_ the sexy things that are happening, so she throws the rope in her duffel bag and takes it with her to Hardison’s bedroom.

Eliot’s shirt and belt are on the ground, and Hardison’s hands are down the back of his pants. Eliot’s flushed, breathing hard, kissing Hardison’s throat sloppy and open-mouthed and writhing against him like there’s no stillness left in him. Parker feels the warmth start in her skin and move inward. Hardison’s fingering Eliot. Eliot’s jeans might as well not be there because she can see Hardison’s fingers crooked inside him, just by the way Eliot can’t seem to close his mouth between kisses.

Parker hugs Hardison from behind and stands on tiptoe to kiss his neck. “You’re so good at this, Hardison. I’m gonna keep learning from you forever.”

“Love you too, girl,” Hardison says, and she hears the smile in his voice. “Mmm.”

Parker tilts her head up to say in Hardison’s ear, “Wanna help me tie him up?”

“Hell yeah. What are you thinking?”

“Three ropes,” Parker declares. “He won’t be able to move but we’ll be able to flip him over and do whatever we want to him. It’ll be fun.”

“Sounds like it. Where do you want him?”

It’s weird, but fun, to talk about Eliot like he’s not there when she can hear him breathing like he’s just been in a fight. “Naked. Face-down on the bed.”

Parker steps back and watches Hardison work. Hardison likes to be gentle with Eliot, and with her too, but he can be gentle and firm at the same time when she asks him to be. He hooks his thumbs in Eliot’s jeans and underpants and yanks them down. Eliot flinches when the waistband comes down over his half-hard dick. Hardison grabs Eliot by the hair, close to the roots, tilting his head back, and takes a second to grin down at him like he just got Eliot as a Christmas present. Then he pulls Eliot toward the bed by the hair, leaving his clothes in a puddle on the floor behind him, and presses him facedown into the duvet. Eliot scrambles to get the rest of his body up onto the bed. They all know, of course, that Eliot could get out of Hardison’s grip in a second if he wanted to. But he doesn’t want to. Parker doesn’t always understand why she likes to be in control the way she does, but she’s pretty sure that’s the point.

First rope. Parker finds the midpoint and holds it in her left fist, the ends in her right. Hardison sits on the edge of the bed and peels off Eliot’s socks, one after the other. Parker snickers. Hardison has a _thing_ about wearing socks during sex. He thinks it’s “just _wrong_.” Parker kneels on the bed next to Eliot’s bare legs. “Hold his hands behind his back,” she tells Hardison.

Hardison holds Eliot’s hands while Parker ties his wrists together. “Up on your knees,” she says, and ties another knot over his abs, so his bound wrists are stuck against his back.

Second rope. Loosen the slipknots. Midpoint in one hand, ends in the other. On the bed, Hardison is stroking Eliot’s hair with one hand, grabbing the knot over Eliot’s stomach with the other, so he’s half-leaning against Hardison’s neck, kissing the hard corner of his jaw. The midpoint goes between Eliot’s shoulder blades, one end under each armpit. Hardison takes the free ends and holds them for her, still stroking Eliot’s hair, as gentle as he was hard when he pulled it before.

Parker takes the rope ends from Hardison and ties them together behind Eliot’s neck, making a shoulder harness. She kisses the back of his neck over the knot, pushing it harder against him with her tongue and teeth. Then she kisses Hardison over Eliot’s shoulder. “Get him on his back.”

Third rope. She keeps it coiled and throws it over her shoulder, ready when she needs it. Hardison has Eliot on his back, a pillow under his hips so he’s not crushing his bound wrists under his back. Parker wouldn’t have thought of that. She kisses him again. He smiles against her mouth and pets the rope on her shoulder like it’s a friendly animal. She takes the free ends of the shoulder harness and ties them to two curlicues in the bed’s fancy metal headboard, leaving enough slack so they can turn Eliot over if they want to.

Parker takes the third rope off her shoulder, ties Eliot’s ankles together, and secures them to the bar at the foot of the bed. Hardison winks at her, leans over, and sucks hard on Eliot’s nipple. He growls and thrashes, but between the wrist tie, ankle tie, and shoulder harness, he can barely move. This isn’t like Hardison’s hand in his hair. He couldn’t get loose even if he wanted to. But he doesn’t want to. That’s the point.

She comes over to Hardison’s side of the bed and wraps her arm around his waist. They look down at Eliot. He’s a stretch of pale skin, broken up by the black ropes at his wrists, shoulders, abs, and ankles, and the flush in his cheeks, chest, and half-hard cock. His eyes are closed as he breathes into the ropes, his body shifting against them as his chest rises and falls.

Suddenly, Parker remembers a fantasy she and Hardison had, back when this was Parker-and-Hardison and not yet Parker-and-Hardison-and-Eliot. What if they had sex in front of him and all he could do was watch? Now Parker really wants to know how Eliot would react, what Hardison would be like with her with Eliot watching, all tied up like this.

She takes off Hardison’s belt and shoves her hands down the back of his pants just like he did to Eliot. She grabs his ass and pulls him against her and they kiss and kiss. Parker touches Hardison’s hole with her fingertips, not going in, just pressing. “Mmmm,” Hardison sighs into her mouth. “Yeah, mama. Just… mmm, like that.” His hands move up her back and find the place where her bra isn’t. Parker takes pity on him and takes her shirt off, but then his shirt has to go too, because fair’s fair. They grab onto each other’s bare skin and kiss each other’s necks and Parker is sure that isn’t just Hardison groaning. She turns her head toward Eliot as Hardison nips at her collarbones. His mouth is open, the tip of his tongue resting just behind his bottom lip. His eyes are locked on Hardison’s tongue against her throat, but even though he twists in their direction, he can’t get enough leverage to turn over and get a really good look.

Hardison puts his hand down Parker’s pants just as she gets her hands back down his. She circles around his hole and he circles her clit right back. Parker gasps against his chest. “That is not fair. I need lube to finger you, and with me you can get started without any lube.”

“You can go get lube whenever you want, girl.” Hardison’s voice is warm in that way it gets when he feels like laughing but doesn’t. “Just walk away right now and grab some.”

But that would mean Hardison wouldn’t be fingering her anymore, and he knows it. Parker growls in frustration and thrusts her hips. Hardison lets the laugh loose from his chest and curls a finger into her. “Ahhhh,” says Parker, grabbing his ass because she _wants_ to, damn it, not because her legs feel weak or anything. Someone’s breathing really loud, and yeah, it’s her, but it’s also coming from a ribcage bigger and deeper than hers, and now she wants to do something to Hardison to make Eliot pant like that. It’s enough motivation to step away from Hardison and his big, clever hands and get out the lube from her duffel bag. But she makes sure to take off her pants and underwear along the way, so Hardison can get full access.

When Hardison sees her strip, he gets his clothes off too, including his socks, which reminds Parker to take off her socks too. Hardison’s hang-ups may be weird, but she has to respect them, because that’s what you do when you love someone. Then, finally, she can cover her hand in lube, grab Hardison’s waist, and slowly sink her finger between his cheeks. He fingers her right back and says, “Oh, _mama,_ ” really loud, louder than he usually does, which makes Parker wonder what it means.

Then Eliot says, “Yeah, Parker, come _on_ ,” and she realizes Hardison’s putting on a show for Eliot. They do that for each other a lot, act like they don’t feel what they really do. Usually Parker doesn’t really get why, but right now she understands. Hardison likes acting for fun, to really make them happy, not for a grift. He’s good at it, too. Eliot can’t touch them right now, but Hardison is letting him be part of it by making this into a show for him.

Parker doesn’t think she can act, not in front of them, but she can be Hardison’s prop. So she grinds down against Hardison’s fingers and hooks two of her own into his prostate, and he says, “Yeah, baby, more, I can take it. Oh _yeah_.” He groans and arches his back when she gets up to three fingers, and she isn’t even sure whether Eliot is saying words, but whatever’s coming out of his mouth she’s pretty sure it all means _yes, yes, I like that._

Finally Parker finds the right angle so she can rub against Hardison’s palm while keeping his fingers inside her right _there_ , and that whimpering sound she keeps making isn’t acting at all, she just can’t help it when she can feel Eliot and Hardison watching her even with her eyes closed. She clenches around his fingers and kisses his ear. When she feels ready, she slits her eyes open. The sight of Eliot scalds her. His mouth is red from biting his own lips. There are a few strands of hair fallen over his face that he can’t brush away. His cock is deep red and leaking, but all he can do is roll his hips against the pillow and bite down on his lower lip again.

“Look at him,” Parker says in Hardison’s ear. Hardison turns, his cheek pressed against her temple. It feels like there should be sparks flying through the air between his eyes and Eliot’s, like maybe there _could_ be. Parker flutters her fingers inside Hardison, making his breath catch, and says, “Don’t you wanna fuck him?”

Parker feels Hardison’s cheek stretch with a smile. “Yeah. Yeah, I _really_ do.”

Eliot stares up at Hardison like he just got sucker-punched to the jaw, and for that Parker just _has_ to kiss Hardison, a _lot_. She grinds against his hand and fucks him with her fingers and sucks on his lips until they’re burning hot with how close the blood is to the skin.

She pulls away from Hardison’s mouth with a pop. “Get on top of him,” she says breathlessly. “I’ll help.”

“Whoa, whoa, hold up,” Hardison says. “I ain’t taking it from this man for the first time without kissing the hell out of him first. You gotta give me, like, five minutes at _least_. _”_

Parker could never kiss for five minutes straight. But she likes watching Hardison and Eliot do it. Hardison lies down next to Eliot on the bed, curls his hand around the rope knotted over Eliot’s stomach, and presses a trail of little kisses up his neck, to the corner of his mouth, then dives right in. Parker sits up by the headboard, strokes Hardison’s head and cheek with one hand, and strokes herself with the other. She watches them for a few seconds, but then they both open their eyes and stare into each other like there’s whole books written inside each other’s faces, and she has to look away and just listen to the soft wet sighs they make into each other’s mouths, rubbing herself off to the sound of them making out. They never needed to take up more than one of her senses to turn her on.

The soft sounds break off, and Hardison says, “You okay there, Parker?”

Parker opens her eyes. “Yeah. Just waiting for my turn. Take your time.”

Hardison presses one last kiss to Eliot’s forehead. “He’s all yours.”

“Nah. He’s ours.” Parker takes his mouth next, hard with lots of teeth, everything that doesn’t come naturally to Hardison. Eliot growls and does his best to bite back. She comes away smiling, her lips sore. “This is gonna be good.”

Eliot crinkles around the eyes. “You think?”

“Yup! But no coming before Hardison does. Got it?”

“What about you?”

She kisses him on the nose. “Maybe. I’ll let you know.”

Finally, Hardison straddles Eliot, rubbing their cocks together, just a little. Parker gets a condom and a whole bottle of lube. Hardison settles back on Eliot’s thighs while she rolls the condom on, then a palmful of lube. Eliot groans with relief when her slick hand closes around him. But she only gives him enough strokes to cover him in lube. She means for Eliot to last.

Parker kisses Hardison’s nose. “You ready?”

Hardison kisses her nose right back. “Yeah.”

Parker holds Eliot’s chin with her lubed hand, smearing his face with it. With him, she doesn’t have to ask. He just tilts his head down and gives her fingertip a sucking kiss, his hungry blue eyes fixed on Hardison.

Hardison’s up on his knees, sliding Eliot’s cock between his asscheeks, his eyes half-hooded, biting his lip. Parker grabs Eliot and guides him in, just the head. Hardison lets out a harsh breath, like he’s in pain, but his open mouth is curved up at the corners. Eliot strains against the ropes at his shoulders, closes his teeth over a snarl. Hardison sinks down lower, until Parker’s fist is pressed up against his open hole. She rubs her thumb where he and Eliot come together and he says, “Fuck, oh _fuck_ , babe, just let me have him, _please_.” So she lets him, of course, moving her hand to grab onto his hip. He settles down, down, until he can’t anymore.

Eliot’s eyes are wide open, staring up like he’s trying to take Hardison into him the same way Hardison’s taken Eliot. His throat works. He licks his lips. “Damn. _Damn_ it, Hardison _._ Can’t kiss you,” he says hoarsely. “Parker, kiss that man for me.”

Parker does. She does it the way Eliot would, slow and deep with breaks for sweet little breathy sounds. She feels Hardison rocking gently on Eliot’s cock, just little flexes of his thighs. When she looks down, she sees Hardison’s gone a bit soft. She reaches down and gives his cock a squeeze. “Let me help with that.” She kneels behind Hardison, her chest against his back, and strokes him while he rides Eliot deep and slow. She can hear Eliot panting like he’s running a race. It must be torture for him, going this slow, like when Hardison licks her clit like he has all the time in the world and she feels like she’s going to scream.

Hardison gets harder and harder, and he moves his hips faster, fucking himself up against her hand and down onto Eliot’s cock. Parker kisses Hardison’s shoulder blade and wishes she could see his face. Well, it seems like he doesn’t need her help anymore, and her clit is aching. She’s pretty sure she knows where she wants to be.

She slithers out from behind Hardison and lets herself take it all in for a moment: the chafe marks around Eliot’s ropes, Hardison’s fist clenching on the knot on Eliot’s stomach, his other hand twisting around the head of his cock as he rides Eliot, drips sweat onto him. Eliot watches Hardison and not for one second do his eyes flick to the door, the windows, the exits, the possible entrances. Parker is achingly jealous of him, in that moment. There are so many things she’s learned to let go for them, but not that. Not yet.

Parker leans down and says in Eliot’s ear, loud enough for Hardison to hear, “I think I’m gonna fuck your face.”

Eliot growls, “Oh, you’d _better_.”

She straddles him, facing Hardison. She braces one hand on the bed and one on the back of Hardison’s neck. When she lowers her thighs, Eliot’s mouth is open and waiting for her. She babbles high-pitched nonsense words and presses down into the seal of his lips. She feels him _hum_. Parker leans forward, her hand firm behind Hardison’s head, and pours her cries into the cup of his mouth.

He groans right back, maybe even louder than her. Her mouth buzzes and tingles with the long low-pitched screams he makes with each wet kiss. Parker rolls her hips in time with the slick sound of Hardison jerking himself off, and remembers to lift herself up every once in a while so Eliot can gulp down a deep breath. Hardison pulls away from Parker with a loud gasp. “Oh _fuck_ , Eliot, love, just a little more – I need you to – ”

Eliot whines into Parker’s clit and snaps his hips up, up, up, and Hardison looses come over the stripe of black rope on Eliot’s stomach. Parker strokes the back of his head and watches with a smile on her face. Hardison’s breathing slows against her cheek.

“Think you can stay?” Parker asks. “Finish him off like this?”

Hardison laughs silently. “Hah. No way. My ass needs a break. But I’ll do it with my mouth if you want.”

That makes Eliot groan into her cunt.

Parker smiles. “Okay. But make sure he gets _me_ off first.”

Hardison pulls off of Eliot, gasps when his cock slips out. “Whoa. Feels all… empty. Kinda.”

Parker closes her eyes and laughs as Eliot licks inside her. “Now you know how Eliot feels after you fuck him.”

Hardison takes a minute to clean himself up and get rid of the condom. Then he curls up next to Eliot on the bed and starts mouthing slowly along his cock like he could keep it up for hours if he wanted to. That makes Eliot growl and really get into fucking her with his tongue. Parker cries out and her thighs wobble and for a second she thinks she might fall over, but Hardison grabs her arm, holds her steady. Eliot’s whole body moves as he presses his face into her again and again. The bed creaks with it. He’s giving her as good as he gave Hardison. He never gives them less than everything he can.

Eliot’s teeth, firm and solid with the lightest tickle of pain, suddenly feel like the best thing in the world on Parker’s clit. She rocks against it, that hard edge in the soft wet glove of his mouth, with a keening she can’t stop. Hardison makes a soft desperate sound against Eliot’s cock that reminds her of the way he begged Eliot just before he came, and Parker goes to that warm soft place where everything is safe, and the orgasm can rush over her, from her toes to the ends of her hair.

Parker falls forward onto Eliot’s chest. “Okay,” she breathes. “Yeah. Okay. Make him see stars, Hardison. He deserves it.”

Hardison grins lazily. He grabs the base of Eliot’s cock and sinks his mouth onto it. Parker rolls off of Eliot so she can see better. His face and stomach are shiny with her and Hardison’s come. His eyes are soft and open, a little dreamy even, and Parker thinks that maybe he’s off in that other place he sometimes goes when he’s totally under their control. Parker cups his chin and strokes his hair, humming a little, even though she knows she’s not as musical as him or Hardison. Hardison sucks harder, his tongue flicking up and down the underside of Eliot’s cock. Eliot turns his head and moans into Parker’s palm, and Hardison pulls away just before Eliot’s orgasm, so his come shoots on his belly and mixes with Hardison’s.

Parker kisses Eliot on the forehead, then the temple, then the corner of his mouth, then a proper kiss, lips to lips. “You were great.”

Eliot’s mouth moves, but no sound comes out. Hardison sits up and says, “Give him a minute. He’s orgasm-stupid. Happens to the best of us.” He pats Eliot fondly on the thigh.

“You were great too,” Parker tells him.

“For you two? I’m always my best.” Hardison squeezes Eliot’s hip. “Hey there, love. You with us?”

“Yeah,” Eliot rasps. His eyes are half-closed.

“How are you?”

“Never been better.”

“You want those ropes off?”

“Mmm, not yet. I like ‘em.”

“You’re gonna get sore if you keep them on much longer,” Parker points out.

“I know. Just… stay here for a bit and let me keep them on, okay?”

Parker thinks she might understand. As long as he still has the ropes on, they can’t leave him. Not that they would, when they took them off. But with the ropes on, he needs them, so they have to stay. “Yes,” she says. She leans against the pillows at the headboard and strokes Eliot’s hair. “Yes.”

“Yes?” says Hardison, raising an eyebrow.

Parker isn’t going to tell them the whole story. But the way it started was that she was afraid one time that Hardison was going to leave her. She didn’t say so to Sophie, but she kind of talked around it, and Sophie understood in that way she always does. Then came the part she’s going to say out loud. “Sophie once told me a relationship is saying ‘yes’ to someone every day. It matters because you _can_ say ‘no,’ but you say ‘yes’ instead. So… yes.”

“Pretty sure I’m gonna say it tomorrow too, and the day after that,” Hardison says. He runs his fingers up and down Eliot’s leg. “Yes.”

“Yes.” Eliot settles into his ropes like a full-body embrace. After a moment, he adds, “Obviously.”

It wasn’t long ago that Parker wouldn’t have been able to say more than _maybe_. But she’s different now. It’s not just that she can say yes. She thinks she can keep saying it, over and over, and it doesn’t even feel like a trap. It feels more like jumping over the edge with a harness tied around her. Like she’s setting herself free.


End file.
